Full text of "Memories and studies"

See other formats

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to
prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:

+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for
personal, non-commercial purposes.

+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine
translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the
use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.

+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find
additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.

+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just
because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other
countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of
any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner
anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers
discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web

at |http : //books . google . com/

%p IS^tUiam Jametf

THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A STUDY IN
HUMAN NATURE. Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-
1902. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans,
Green & Co. 1902.

PRAGMATISM: A NEW NAME FOR SOME OLD WAYS OF THINK-
ING: POPULAR LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York,
London, Bombay, and Calcutta : Longmans, Green & Co. 1907.

THE MEANING OF TRUTH A SEQUEL TO "PRAGMATISM." 8vo.
New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta : Longmans, Gre«n & Co.
1909.

A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE: hIbBERT LECTURES ON THE
PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, Lon-
don, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1909.

SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY: A BEGINNING OF AN IN-
TRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY* 8vo. New York, London, Bom-
bay, and Calcutta : Longmans, Green & Co. 191 1.

THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN POPULAR
PHILOSOPHY. lamo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta*
Longmans, Green & Co. 1897.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and

Calcutta : Longmans, Green & Co. 191 1.
THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY, a vols., 8vo. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. London : Macmillan & Co. 1890.
.PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE. i2mo. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. London : Macmillan & Co. 1893.

TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO STUDENTS
ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS, wmo. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. London, Bombay, and Calcutta : Longmans, Green & Co. 1899.

HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS TO THE
DOCTRINE. i6mo. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co. 1898.

THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited, with an
Introduction, by William James. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston :
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1885.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

BY
WILLIAM JAMES

JS.J* *-»••€» J»

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

Fourth Aventte and SOth Street, New York

LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1911

162384

• • -• • •

• • t • ••

• • "•• • •

• • • • • •

• • • • •

• • •

PREFATORY NOTE

Professor William James formed the intention
shortly before his death of republishing a number
of popular addresses and essays under the title
which this book now bears; but unfortunately he
found no opportunity to attend to any detail of the
book himself, or to leave definite instructions for
others. I believe, h^^ever, that I have departed
in no substantial degree from my father's idea,
except perhaps by including two or three short
pieces which were first addressed to special occa-
sions or audiences and which now seem clearly
worthy of republication in their original form, al-
though he might not have been willing to reprint
them himself without therecastings to which he was
ever most attentive when preparing for new readers.
Everything in this volume has already appeared in
print in magazines or otherwise, and definite ac-
knowledgements are hereinafter made in the appro-
priate places. Comparison with the original texts
will disclose slight variations in a few passages, and
it is therefore proper to explain that in these pas-
sages the present text follows emendations of the
original which have survived in the author's own

handwriting.

Henry James, Jr.

CONTENTS

I. Louis Agasbiz . 1

n. Address at the Emerson Centenary in Con'

CORD * 17

in. Robert Gould Shaw ....•..< 35

IV. Francis Boott 63 '

V. Thomas Davidson: A Knight-Errant of the

Intellectual Life 73

VI. Herbert Spencer's Autobiography • . . 105

Vn. Frederick Myers' Services to Psychology /. 143

Vlll. Final Impressions of a Psychical ResearcheVlITI^

IX. On Some Mental Effects of the Earth-
quake 207

X. The Energies of Men ...... 227

^***XI. The Moral EQui vALm^T of War . .^ . . 2(

Xn. Remarks at the Peace Banquet .... 297

. ^XIII. The Social Value of the College-Bred^ . SOflU*

XIV. The University and the Individual ^

The Ph. D. Octopus 32d "

The True Harvard 348

Stanford ' s Ideal Dest iny 356

XV. A Pluralistic Mystic 369

LOUIS AGASSIZ

LOUIS AGASSIZi

It would be unnatural to have such an as-
semblage as this meet in the Museum and
Faculty Room of this University and yet
have no public word spoken in honor of a
name which must be silently present to the
minds of all oiu* visitors.

At some near f utiu-e day, it is to be hoped
some one of you who is well acquainted with
Agassiz's scientific career will discoiu-se here
concerning it, — I could not now, even if I
would, speak to you of that of which you have
far more intimate knowledge than !• On this
social occasion it has seemed that what Agassiz
stood for in the way of character and influ-
ence is the more fitting thing to commem-
orate, and to that agreeable task I have been
called. He made an impression that was

^ Words spoken at the reception of the American
Society of Naturalists by the President and Fellows of
Harvard College at Cambridge, December 80« 1896.
Printed in Seienee, N. S. V. «85.

.V- MEMORIES AND STUDIES

* tinrivalled. He left a sort of popular myth —
;the Agassiz legend, as one might say — be-
hind him in the air about us; and life comes
kindlier to all of us, we get more recognition
from the world, because we call ourselves
naturalists, — and that was the class to which
he also belonged.

The secret of such an extraordinarily eflFec-
tive influence lay in the equally extraordinary
mixture of the animal and social gifts, the
intellectual powers, and the desires and pas-
sions of the man. From his boyhood, he
looked on the world as if it and he were made
for each .other, and on the vast diversity of
living things as if he were there with author-
ity to take mental possession of them all.
His habit of collecting began in childhood,
and during his long life knew no bounds
save those that separate the things of Na-
- ture from those of hiunan art. Already in
his student years, in spite of the most strin-
gent poverty, his whole scheme of existence
was that of one predestined to greatness,

who takes that fact for granted, and stands

LOUIS AGASSIZ

forth immediately as a scientific leader of
men.

His passion for knowing living things was
combined with a rapidity of observation, and
a capacity to recognize them again and re-
member everything about them, which all
his life it seemed an easy triumph and delight
for him to exercise, and which never allowed
him to waste a moment in doubts about the
commensurability of his powers with his
tasks. K ever a person lived by faith, he did.
When a boy of twenty, with an allowance of
two hundred and fifty dollars a year, he
maintained an artist attached to his employ,
a custom which never afterwards was departed
from, — except when he maintained two or
three. He lectured from the very outset to
all those who would hear him. "I feel within
myself the strength of a whole generation,"
he wrote to his father at that time, and
launched himself upon the publication of his
costly "Poissons Fossiles " with no clear
vision of the quarter from whence the pay-
ment might be expected to come.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

At Neuchfttd (where betweCTL the ages of
twenty-five and thirty he enjoyed a stipend
that varied from four hundred to six hundred
dollars) he organized a regular academy of
natural history, with its museiun, managing
by one expedient or another to employ
artists, secretaries, and assistants, and to
keep a lithographic and printing establish-
ment of his own employed with the work
that he put forth. Fishes, fossil and living,
echinoderms and glaciers, transfigured them-
selves under his hand, and at thirty he was
already at the zenith of his reputation, rec-
ognized by all as one of those naturalists in
the unlimited sense, one of those folio copies
of mankind, like Linnaeus and Cuvier, who
aim at nothing less than an acquaintance
with the whole of animated Nature, His
genius for classifying was simply marvellous;
and, as his latest biographer says, nowhere
had a single person ever given so decisive an
impulse to natural history.

Such was the hiunan being who on an
October morning fifty years ago disembarked

LOUIS AGASSIZ

at our port, bringing his hungry heart along
with him, his confidence in his destiny, and
his imagination full of plans. The only par-
ticular resource he was assured of was one
course of Lowell Lectures. But of one gen-
eral resource he always was assured, having
always counted on it and never found it to
fail, — and that was the good will of every
fellow-creature in whose presence he could
find an opportunity to describe his aims. His
belief in these was so intense and unqualified
that he could not conceive of others not fed-
ing the furtherance of them to be a duty
binding also upon them. VeUe non discitur,
as Seneca says: — Strength of desire must be
bom with a man, it can't be taught. And
Agassiz came before one with such enthusiasm
glowing in his countenance, — such a per-
suasion radiating from his person that his
projects were the sole things really fit to in-
terest man as man, — that he was absolutely
irresistible. He came, in Byron's words, with
victory beaming from his breast, and every

one went down before him, some yielding him

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

money, some time, some specimens, and some
labor, but all contributing their applause and
their godspeed. And so, living among us
from month to month and from year to year,
with no relation to prudence except his per-
tinacious violation of all her usual laws, he
on the whole achieved the compass of his de-
sires, studied the geology and fauna of a con-
tinent, trained a generation of zo5logists,
founded one of the chief museums of the world,
gave a new impulse to scientific education in
America, and died the idol of the public, as
well as of his circle of immediate pupils and
friends.

The secret of it all was, that while his sci-
entific ideals were an integral part of his
being, something that he never forgot or laid
aside, so that wherever he went he came for-
ward as "the Professor," and talked "shop'*
to every person, young or old, great or little,
learned or unlearned, with whom he was
thrown, he was at the same time so com-
manding a presence, so curious and inquiring,

so responsive and expansive, and so generous

LOUIS AGASSIZ

and reckless of himself and of his own, that
every one said immediately, "Here is no
musty savant, but a man, a great man, a man
on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is ava-
rice and sin." He elevated the popular no-
tion of what a student of Nature could be.
Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had
among us a person of more popularly impres-
sive type. He did not wait for students to
come to him; he made inquiry for promising
youthful collectors, and when he heard of
one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to
come. Thus there is hardly one now of the
American naturalists of my generation whom
Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he said
to every one that a year or two of natural
history, studied as he understood it, would
give the best training for any kind of mental
work. Sometimes he was amusingly naif in
this regard, as when he oflFered to put his
whole Museimi at the disposition of the
Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and
labor there. And I well remember how cer-
tain officials of the Brazilian empire smiled

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

at the cordiality with which he pressed upon
them a similar invitation. But it had a great
eflFect. Natural history must indeed be a
godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can so
adore it, people said; and the very definition
and meaning of the word naturalist under-
went a favorable alteration in the common
mind.

Certain sayings of Agassiz's, as the famous
one that he "had no time for making money,''
and his habit of naming his occupation simply
as that of "teacher," have caught the public
fancy, and are permanent benefactions. We
all enjoy more consideration for the fact that
he manifested himself here thus before us in
his day.

He was a splendid example of the tempera-
ment that looks forward and not backward,
and never wastes a moment in regrets for the
irrevocable. I had the privilege of admission
to his society during the Thayer expedition to
Brazil. I well remember at night, as we all
swxmg in our hammocks in the fairy-like

moonlight, on the deck of the steamer that

LOUIS AGASSIZ

throbbed its way up the Amazon between the
forests guarding the stream on either side,
how he turned and whispered, "James, are
you awake?" and continued, "J cannot
sleep; I am too happy; I keep thinking of
these glorious plans." The plans contem-
plated following the Amazon to its head-
waters, and penetrating the Andes in Peru.
And yet, when he arrived at the Peruvian
frontier and learned that that country had
broken into revolution, that his letters to
officials would be useless, and that that part
of the project must be given up, although he
was indeed bitterly chagrined and excited for
part of an hour, when the hour had passed over
it seemed as if he had quite forgotten the dis-
appointment, so enthusiastically was he occu-
pied already with the new scheme substituted
by his active mind.

Agassiz's influence on methods of teaching
in our community was prompt and decisive,
— all the more so that it struck people's im-
agination by its very excess. The good old

way of committing printed abstractions to

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

memory seems never to have received such a
shock as it encountered at his hands. There
is probably no public school teacher now in
New England who will not tell you how
Agassiz used to lock a student up in a room
full of turtle shells, or lobster shells, or oyster
shells, without a book or word to help him,
and not let him out till he had discovered all
the truths which the objects contained. Some
found the truths after weeks and months of
lonely sorrow; others never found them.
Those who found them were already made
into naturalists thereby — the failures were
blotted from the book of honor and of life.
/"Go to Nature; take the facts into your own
\ hands; look, and see for yourself!" — these
were the maxims which Agassiz preached
wherever he went, and their eflFect on peda-
gogy was electric. The extreme rigor of his
devotion to this concrete method of learning
was the natural consequence of his own
peculiar type of intellect, in which the capac-
ity for abstraction and causal reasoning and

tracing chains of consequences from hypoth-

LOUIS AGASSIZ

eses was so much less developed than the
genius for acquaintance with vast volumes of
detail, and for seizing upon analogies and rela-
tions of the more proximate and concrete
kind. While on the Thayer expedition, I
remember that I often put questions to him
about the facts of our new tropical habitat,
but I doubt if he ever answered one of these
questions of mine outright. He always said:
"There, you see you have a definite problem;
go and look and find the answer for yourself.'*
His severity in this line was a living rebuke
to all abstractionists and would-be biological
philosophers. More than once have I heard
him quote with deep feeling the lines from
Faust:

" Grau, theurer Preund, ist alle Theorie.
Und grun des Lebens goldner Baum."

The only man he really loved and had use

for was the man who could bring him facts.

To see facts, not to argue or raisonniren, was

what life meant for him; and I think he often

positively loathed the ratiocinating type of

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

as of life's morning, that makes the world
seem young arid fresh once more. May we
all, and especially may those yomiger mem-
bers of our association who never knew him,
give a grateful thought to his memory as we
wander through that Museum which he
founded, and through this University whose
ideals he did so much to elevate and define.

ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON
CENTENARY IN CONCORD

ADDRESS AT THE EMERSON
CENTENARY IN CONCORD*

The pathos of death is this, that when the
days of one's life are ended, those days that
were so crowded with business and felt so
heavy in their passing, what remains of one
in memory should usually be so slight a thing.
The phantom of an attitude, the echo qt a
certain mode of thought, a few pages of
print, some invention, or some victory we
gained in a brief critical hour, are all that can
siu^ve the best of us* It is as if the whole of a
man's significance had now shrunk into the
phantom of an attitude, into a mere musical
note or phrase suggestive of his singularity —
happy are those whose singularity gives a note
so clear as to be victorious over the inevitable
pity of such a diminution and abridgment. )

^ An Address delivered at the Centenary of the
Birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Concord, May 25^
1903, and printed in the published proceedings of that
meeting.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

An ideal wraith like this, of Emerson's per-
sonality, hovers over all Concord to-day, tak-
ing, in the minds of those of you who were
his neighbors and intimates a somewhat
fuller shape, remaining more abstract in the
younger generation, but bringing home to
all of us the notion of a spirit indescribably
precious. The form that so lately moved
upon these streets and country roads, or
awaited in these fields and woods the beloved
Muse's visits, is now dust; but the soul's
note, the spiritual voice, rises strong and
clear above the uproar of the times, and seems
securely destined to exert an ennobling in-
fluence over future generations.

What gave a flavor so matchless to Emer-
son's individuality was, even more than his
rich mental gifts, their singularly harmonious
combination. Rarely has a man so accu-
rately known the limits of his genius or so
unfailingly kept within them. "Stand by
your order," he used to say to youthful stu-
dents; and perhaps the paramount impres-
sion one gets of his life is of his loyalty to

EMERSON

his own personal type and mission. The type
was that of what he liked to call the scholar,
the perceiver of pure truth; and the mission
was that of the reporter in worthy form of
each perception. The day is good, he said,
in which we have the most perceptions. There
are times when the cawing of a crow, a weed,
a snowflake, or a farmer planting in his field
become symbols to the intellect of truths
equal to those which the most majestic phe-
nomena can open. Let me mind my own
charge, then, walk alone, consult the sky,
the field and forest, sedulously waiting every
morning for the news concerning the struc-
ture of the universe which the good Spirit will
give me.

This was the first half of Emerson, but only
half; for genius, as he said, is insatiate for
expression, and truth has to be clad in the
right verbal garment. The form of the gar-
ment was so vital with Emerson that it is im-
possible to separate it from the matter. They
form a chemical combination — thoughts

which would be trivial expressed otherwise,

«1

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

are important through the nouns and verbs
to which he married them. The style is the
man, it has been said; the man Emerson's
mission culminated in his style, and if we
must define him in one word, we have to call
him Artist. He was an artist whose medium
was verbal and who wrought in spiritual
material.

This duty of spiritual seeing and reporting
determined the whole telior of his life. It
was to shield this duty from invasion and
distraction that he dwelt in the country, that
he consistently declined to entangle himself
with associations or to encumber himself with
functions which, however he might believe in
them, he felt were duties for other men and
not for him. Even the care of his garden,
"with its stoopings and fingerings in a few
yards of space," he found "narrowing and
poisoning," and took to long free walks
and saunterings instead, without apology.
"Causes " innumerable sought to enlist him as
their "worker " — all got his smile and word

of sympathy, but none entrapped him into

EMERSON

SCTvice. The struggle against slavery itself,
deeply as it appealed to him, found him firm:
"God must govern his own world, and knows
his way out of this pit without my desertion
of my post, which has none to guard it but
me. I have quite other slaves to face than
those Negroes, to wit, imprisoned thoughts
far back in the brain of man, and which have
no watchman or lover or defender but me/'
This in reply to the possible questions of his
own conscience. To hot-blooded moralists
with more objective ideas of duty, such a
fidelity to the limits of his genius must often
have made him seem provokingly remote
and unavailable ; but we, who can see things
in more liberal perspective, must unqualifi-
ably approve the results. The faultless tact
with which he kept his safe limits while he
so dauntlessly asserted himself within them,
is an example fitted to give heart to other
theorists and artists the world over.

The insight and creed from which Emer-
son's life followed can be best summed up in

his own verses:

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

** So nigh is grandeur to our dust.
So near is God to man! "

Through the individual fact there ever shone
for him the eflf ulgenee of the Universal Reason.
The great Cosmic Intellect terminates and
houses itself in mortal men and passing hours.
Each of us is an angle of its eternal vision,
and the only way to be true to our Maker is
to be loyal to oiu-selves. ''O rich and various
Man!'' he cries, "thou palace of sight and
sound, carrying in thy senses the morning
and the night and the unfathomable galaxy;
in thy brain the geometry of the city of God;
in thy heart the bower of love and the realms
of right and wrong."

If the individual open thus directly into the
Absolute, it follows that there is something in
each and all of us, even the lowliest, that ought
not to consent to borrowing traditions and
living at second hand. "If John was perfect,
why are you and I alive?" Emerson writes;
"As long as any man exists there is some need
of him; let him fight for his own." This
faith that in a life at first hand there is some-

EMERSON

thing sacred is perhaps the most character-
istic note in Emerson's writings. The hottest
side of him is this non-conformist persuasion,
and if his temper could ever verge on common
irascibility, it would be by reason of the pas-
sionate character of his feelings on this point.
The world is still new and untried. In seeing
freshly, and not in hearing of what others
saw, shall a man find what truth is. ^^Each
one of us can bask in the great morning which
rises out of the Eastern Sea, and be himself
one of the children of the light." "Trust
thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron
string. There is a time in each man's educa-
tion when he must arrive at the conviction
that imitation is suicide; when he must take
himself for better or worse as his portion; and
know that though the wide universe is full of
good, no kernel of nourishing com can come
to him but through his toil bestowed on that
plot of ground which it was given him to till."
The matchless eloquence with which Emer-
son proclaimed the sovereignty of the living

individual electrified and emancipated his

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

generation, and this bugle-blast will doubtless
be regarded by f utiu-e critics as the soul of his
message. The present man is the aboriginal
rfeality, the Institution is derivative, and the
past man is irrelevant and obliterate for
present issues. "If anyone would lay an axe
to your tree witli a text from 1 John, v, 7, or
a sentence from Saint Paul, say to him,"
Emerson wrote, ** * My tree is Yggdrasil, thedtree
of life.' Let him know by your seciu-ity that
your conviction is clear and suflScient, and,
if he were Paid himself, that you also are here
and with your Creator.*' "Cleave ever to
God," he insisted, "against the name of
God;" — and so, in spite of the intensely re-
ligious character of his total thought, when he
began his career it seemed to many of his
brethren in the clerical profession that he was
little more than an iconoclast and desecrator.
Emerson's belief that the individual must
in reason be adequate to the vocation for which
the Spirit of the world has called him into
being, is the source of those sublime pages,

hearteners and sustainers of our youth, in

EMERSON

which he urges his hearers to be incorruptibly
true to their own private conscience. Nothing ]
can harm the man who rests in his appointed
place and character. Such a man is invul-
nerable; he balances the universe, balances i
it as much by keeping small when he is small,
as by being great and spreading when he is
great. "I love and honor Epaminondas,"
said Emerson, "but I do not wish to be
Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the
world of this hour than the world of his hour.
Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the
least imeasiness by saying, ' He acted and thou
sittest still.' I see action to be good when
the need is, and sitting still to be also good.
Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him
for, would have sat still with joy and peace,
if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and
affords space for all modes of love and forti-
tude.*' "The fact that I am here certainly
shows me that the Soul has need of an organ
here, and shall I not assume the post?'*
The vanity of all superserviceablehess and

pretence was never more happily set forth

«7

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

than by Emerson in the many passages in
which he develops this aspect of his philoso-
phy. Character infallibly proclaims itself.
"Hide your thoughts! — hide the sun and
moon. They publish themselves to the uni-
verse. They will speak through you though
you were dumb. They will flow out of your
actions, your manners and your face. . . .
Don't say things: What you are stands over
you the while and thunders so that I cannot
say what you say to the contrary. . . . /What
a man is engraves itself upon him in letters of
light. ' Concealment avails him nothing, boast-
ing nothing. There is confession in the glances
of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations;
and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him,
mars all his good impression. Men know not
why they do not trust him, but they do not
trust him. His vice glasses the eye, casts
lines of mean expression in the cheek, pinches
the nose, sets the mark of the beast upon the
back of the head, and writes, O fool! fool! on
the forehead of a king. If you would not be

known to do a thing, never do it; a man may

EMERSON

play the fool in the drifts of a desert, but
every grain of sand shall seem to see. — How
<?an a man be concealed? How can he be
concealed?"

On the other hand, never was a sincere
word or a sincere thought utterly lost.
"Never a magnanimity fell to the ground
but there is some heart to greet and accept it
unexpectedly. . . . The hero fears not that
if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave
act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved. One
knows it, — himself, — and is pledged by it
to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim,
which will prove in the end a better procla-
mation than the relating of the incident."

The same indefeasible right to be exactly
what one is, provided one only be authentic,
spreads itself, in Emerson's way of thinking,
from persons to things and to times and places.
No date, no position is insignificant, if the
life that fills it out be only genuine: —

"In solitude, in a remote village, the ardent

youth loiters and mourns. With inflamed

eye, in this sleeping wilderness, he has read

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the story of the Emperor, Charles the Fifth, un-
until his fancy has brought home to the sur-
rounding woods the faint roar of cannonades
in the Milanese, and marches in Germany.
He is curious concerning that man's day.
What filled it? The crowded orders, the stem
decisions, the foreign despatches, the Castilian
etiquette? The soul answers — Behold his
day here! In the sighing of these woods, in
the quiet of these gray fields, in the cool
breeze that sings out of these northern moun-
tains; in the workmen, the boys, the maidens
you meet, — in the hopes of the morning, the
ennui of noon, and sauntering of the after-
noon; in the disquieting comparisons; in the
regrets at want of vigor; in the great idea a^d
the puny execution, — behold Charjes the
Fifth's day; another, yet the same; behold
Chatham's, Hampden's, Bayard's, Alfred's,
Scipio's, Pericles's day, — day of all that are
bom of women. The difference of circum-
stance is merely costume. I am tasting the
self -same life, — its sweetness, its greatness, its

pain, which I so admire in other men. Do not

EMERSON

fooKshly ask of the inscrutable, obliterated
past what it cannot tell, — the details of that
nature, of that day, called Byron or Burke; —
but ask it of the enveloping Now. ... Be
lord of a day, and you can put up your history

) books."

"The deep to-day which all men scorn "
receives thus from Emerson superb revindica-

* tion. " Other world ! there is no other world."
All God's life opens into the individual par-
ticular, and here and now, or nowhere, is re-
ality. "The present hour is the decisive hour,
and every day is doomsday."

Such a conviction that Divinity is every-
where may easily make of one an optimist of the
senlynental type that refuses to speak ill of
anything. Emerson's drastic perception . of
^' differences kept him at the opposite pole from
this weakiftss. After you have seen men a
few times, he could say, you find most of them
as alike as their bams and pantries, and soon
as musty and as dreary. Never was such a
fastidious lover of significance and distinction,

and never an eye so keen for their discovery.
• 81

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

His optimism liad nothing in common with
that indiscriminate hurrahing for the Uni-
verse with which Walt Whitman has made us
familiar. For Emerson, the individual fact
and moment were indeed suffused with abso-
lute radiance, but it was upon a condition that
saved the situation — they must be worthy
specimens, — sincere, authentic, archetypal;
they must have made connection with what
he calls the Moral Sentiment, they must in
some way act as symbolic mouthpieces of the
Universe's meaning. To know just which thing
does act in this way, and which thing fails
to make the true connection, is the secret
(somewhat incommunicable, it must be con-
fessed) of seership, and doubtless we must not
expect of the seer too rigorous a consistency.
Emerson himself was a real seer. He could
perceive the full squalor of the indit'idual fact,
but he could also see the transfiguration. He
might easily have found himself saying of
some present-day agitator against our Phil-
ippine conquest what he said of this or that re-
former of his own time. He might have called.

EMERSON

him, as a private person, a tedious bore and
canter. But he would infallibly have added
what he then added: "It is strange and horri-
ble to say this, for I feel that under him and
his partiality and exelusiveness is the earth
and the sea, and all that in them is, and the
axis round which the Universe revolves passes
through his body where he stands."

Be it how it may, then, this is Emerson's
revelation: — The point of any pen can be an
epitome of reality; the commonest person's
act, if genuinely actuated, can lay hold on
eternity. This vision is the head-spring of all
his outpourings; and it is for this truth, given
to no previous literary artist to express in such
penetratingly persuasive tones, that posterity
will reckon him a prophet, and, perhaps neg-
lecting other pages, piously turn to those that
convey this message. His life was one long
conversation with the invisible divine, express-
ing itself through individuals and particulars:
— "So nigh is grandeur to our dust, so near
is God to man!"

I spoke of how shrunken the wraith, how
33

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

thin the echo, of men is after they are departed.
Emerson's wraith comes to me now as if it
were but the very voice of this victorious
argument. His words to this effect are certain
to be quoted and extracted more and more as
time goes on, and to take their place among
the Scriptiu-es of humanity. "'Gainst death
and all oblivious enmity, shall you pace forth,"
beloved Master. As long as our English lan-
guage lasts men's hearts will be cheered and
their souls strengthened and liberated by the
noble and musical pages with which you have
enriched it.

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

ROBERT GOULD SHAW^

xouB Excellency, your Honor, Soldiers, and
Friends : In these unveiling exercises the duty
falls to me of expressing in simple words some
of the feelings which have actuated the givers
of St. Gaudens' noble work of bronze, and of
briefly recalling the history of Robert Shaw
and of his regiment to the memory of this
possibly too forgetful generation.

The men who do brave deeds are usually
unconscious of their picturesqueness. For
two nights previous to the assault upon Fort
Wagner, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regi-
ment had been afoot, making forced marches
in the rain; and on the day of the battle the
men had had no food since early morning. As
they lay there in the evening twilight, hungry
and wet, against the cold sands of Morris

^ Oration at the Exercises in the Boston Music
Hall» May 81» 1897, upon the Unveiling of the Shaw
Monument.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Island, with the sea-fog drifting over them,
their eyes fixed on the huge bulk of the for-
tress looming darkly three-quarters of a mile
ahead against the sky, and their hearts beating
in expectation of the word that was to bring
them to their feet and launch them on their
desperate charge, neither oflScers nor men
could have been in any holiday mood of con-
templation. Many and different must have
been the thoughts that came and went in
them during that hour of bodeful reverie; but
however free the flights of fancy of some of
them may have been, it is improbable that
any one who lay there had so wild and whiri-
ing an imagination as to foresee in prophetic
vision this morning of a future May, when we,
the people of a richer and more splendid
Boston, with mayor and governor, and troops
from other States, and every circumstance of
ceremony, should meet together to celebrate
their conduct on that evening, and do their
memory this conspicuous honor.

How, indeed, comes it that out of all the

great engagements of the war, engagements in

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

many of which the troops of Massachusetts
had borne the most distinguished part, this
officer, only a young colonel, this regiment
of black men and its maiden battle, — a battle,
moreover, which was lost, — should be picked
out for such unusual commemoration?

The historic significance of an event is meas-
lu-ed neither by its material magnitude, nor
by its immediate success. Thermopylae was
a defeat; but to the Greek imagination,
Leonidas and his few Spartans stood for the
whole worth of Grecian life. Bunker Hill
was a defeat; but for our people, the fight
over that breastwork has always seemed to
show as well as any victory that our fore-
fathers were men of a temper not to be finally
overcome. And so here. The war for our
Union, with all the constitutional questions
which it settled, and all the military lessons
which it gathered in, has throughout its dila-
tory length but one meaning in the eye of
history. And nowhere was that meaning better
symbolized and embodied than in the consti-
tution of this first Northern negro regiment.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Look at the monument and read the
story; — see the mingling of elements which the
sculptor's genius has brought so vividly be-
fore the eye. There on foot go the dark out-
casts, so true to nature that one can almost
hear them breathing as they march. State
after State by its laws had denied them to be
human persons. The Southern leaders in
congressional debates, insolent in their secur-
ity, loved most to designate them by the con-
temptuous collective epithet of "this peculiar
kind of property.'* There they march, warm-
blooded champions of a better day for man.
There on horseback, among them, in his very
habit as he lived, sits the blue-eyed child of
fortune, upon whose happy youth every
divinity had smiled. Onward they move to-
gether, a single resolution kindled in their
eyes, and animating their otherwise so diflfer-
ent frames. The bronze that makes their
memory eternal betrays the very soul and
secret of those awful years.

Since the 'thirties the slavery question had

been the only question, and by the end of the

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

'fifties our land lay sick and shaking with it
like a traveller who has thrown himself down
at night beside a pestilential swamp, and in
the morning finds the fever through the
marrow of his bones. "Only muzzle the Abo-
lition fanatics,'* said the South, "and all will
be well again!" But the Abolitionists would
not be muzzled, — they were the voice of the
world's conscience, they were a part of des-
tiny. Weak as they were, they drove the
South to madness. "Every step she takes in
her blindness," said Wendell Phillips, "is one
more step towards ruin." And when South
Carolina took the final step in battering down
Fort Sumter, it was the fanatics of slavery
themselves who called upon their idolized in-
stitution ruin swift and complete. What
law and reason were unable to accomplish,
had now to be done by that uncertain
and dreadful dispenser of God's judgments.
War — War, with its abominably casual, in-
accurate methods, destroying good and bad
together, but at last able to hew a way out

of intolerable situations, when through man's

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

delusion of perversity every better way is
blocked.

Our great western republic had from its
origin been a singular anomaly. A land of
freedom, boastfully so-called, with human slav-
ery enthroned at the heart of it, and at last
dictating terms of unconditional surrender to
every other organ of its life, what was it but a
thing of falsehood and horrible self-contradic-
tion? For three-quarters of a century it had
nevertheless endured, kept together by policy,
compromise, and concession. But at the last
that republic was torn in two; and truth was
to be possible under the flag. Truth, thank
God, truth! even though for the moment it
must be truth written in hell-fire.

And this, fellow-citizens, is why, after the
great generals have had their monuments,
and long after the abstract soldier's-monu-
ments have been reared on every village green,
we have chosen to take Robert Shaw and his
regiment as the subjects of the first soldier's-
monument to be raised to a particular set of

comparatively undistinguished men. The very

ROBERT GOULD SHAW,

kck of external complication in the history of
these soldiers is what makes them represent
with such typical purity the prof ounder mean-
ing of the Union cause.

Our nation had been founded in what we
may call our American religion, baptized and
reared in the faith that a man requires no
master to take care of him, and that common
people can work out their salvation well
enough together if left free to try. But the
founders had not dared to touch the great in-
tractable exception; and slavery had wrought
until at last the only alternative for the
nation was to fight or die. (What Shaw
and his comrades stand for and show us
is that in such an emergency Americans
of all complexions and conditions can go
forth like brothers, and meet death cheerfully
if need be, in order that this religion of our
native land shall not become a failure on earth. )

We of this Commonwealth believe in that
religion; and it is not at all because Robert
Shaw was an exceptional genius, but simply
because he was faithful to it as we all may

MEiMORIES AND STUDIES

hope to be faithful In our measure when the
times demand, that we wish his beautiful
image to stand here for all time, an inciter to
similarly unselfish public deeds.

Shaw thought but little of himself, yet he
had a personal charm which, as we look back on
him, makes us repeat: "None knew thee but
to love thee, none named thee but to praise/'
This grace of nature was miited in him in the
happiest way with a filial heart, a cheerful will,
and a judgment that was true and fair. And
when the war came, and great things were
doing of the kind that he could help in, he
went as a matter of course to the front. What
country under heaven has not thousands of
such youths to rejoice in, youths on whom the
safety of the human race depends? Whether
or not they leave memorials behind them,
whether their names are writ in water or in
marble, depends mostly on the opportunities
which the accidents of history throw into their
path. Shaw recognized the vital opportunity:
he saw that the time had come when the col-
ored people must put the country in their debt.

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

Colonel Lee has just told us something about
the obstacles with which this idea had to con-
tend. For a large party of us this was still ex-
clusively a white man's war; and should
colored troops be tried and not succeed, con-
fusion would grow worse confounded. Shaw
was a captain in the Massachusetts Second,
when Governor Andrew invited him to take
the lead in the experiment. He was very
modest, and doubted, for a moment, his own
capacity for so responsible a post. We
may also imagine human motives whispering
other doubts. Shaw loved the Second Regi-
ment, illustrious already, and was sure of
promotion where he stood. In this new negro-
soldier venture, loneliness was certain, ridi-
cule inevitable, failure possible; and Shaw
was only twenty-five; and, although he had
stood among the bullets at Cedar Mountain
and Antietam, he had till then been walking
socially on the sunny side of life. But what-
ever doubts may have beset him, they were
over in a day, for he inclined naturally toward

difficult resolves. He accepted the proffered

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

command, and from that moment lived but
for one object, to establish the honor of the
Massachusetts Fifty-fourth.

I have had the privilege of reading his letters
to his family from the day of April when, as
a private in the New York Seventh, he obeyed
the President's first call. Some day they must
be published, for they form a veritable poem
for serenity and simplicity of tone. He took to
camp life as if it were his native element, and
(like so many of our young soldiers) he was
at first all eagerness to make arms his per-
manent profession. Drilling and disciplining;
interminable marching and counter-marching,
and picket-duty on the Upper Potomac as
lieutenant in our Second Regiment, to which
post he had soon been promoted; pride at the
discipline attained by the Second, and horror
at the bad discipline of other regiments; these
are the staple matter of earlier letters, and
last for many months. These, and occasional
more recreative incidents, visits to Virginian
houses, the reading of books like Napier's

"Peninsular War,'' or the "Idylls of the

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

King," Thanksgiving feats, and races among
oflScers, that helped the weary weeks to glide
away. Then the bloodier business opens,
and the plot thickens till the end is reached.
From first to last there is not a rancorous
word against the enemy, — often quite the
reverse, — and amid all the scenes of hard-
ship, death, and devastation that his pen
soon has to write of, there is unfailing cheer-
fulness and even a sort of innermost peace.

After he left it, Robert Shaw's heart still
clung to the fortunes of the Second. Months
later when, in South Carolina with the Fifty-
fourth, he writes to his young wife: "I should
have been major of the Second now if I had
remained there and lived through the battles.
As regards my own pleasure, I had rather have
that place than any other in the army. It
would have been fine to go home a field oflScer
in that regiment ! Poor fellows, how they have
been slaughtered!''

Meanwhile he had well taught his new com-
mand how to do their duty; for only three

days after he wrote this he led them up the

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

parapet of Fort Wagner, where he and nearly
half of them were left upon the ground.

Robert Shaw quickly inspired others with
his own love of discipline. There was some-
thing almost pathetic in the earnestness with
which both the oflScers and men of the Fifty- ^
fourth embraced their mission of showing
that a black regiment could excel in every
virtue known to man. They had good suc-
cess, and the Fifty-fourth became a model in
all possible respects. Almost the only trace
of bitterness in Shaw's whole correspondence
is over an incident in which he thought his
men had been morally disgraced. It had be-
come their duty, immediately after their
arrival at the seat of war, to participate, in
obedience to fanatical orders from the head
of the department, in the sack and burning of
the inoffensive Kttle town of Darien on the
Georgia coast. "I fear," he writes to his wife,
"that such actions will hurt the reputation of
black troops and of those connected with them.
For myself I have gone through the war so far

without dishonor, and I do not like to degen-

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

erate into a plunderer and a robber, — and
the same applies to every officer in my regi-
ment. After going through the hard cam-
paigning and the hard fighting in Virginia,
this makes me very much ashamed. There
are two courses only for me to pursue: to
obey orders and say nothing; or to refuse to
go upon any more such expeditions, and be put
under arrest and probably court-martialled,
which is a very serious thing.'* Fortunately
for Shaw, the general in command of that
department was almost inamediately relieved.
Four weeks of camp life and discipline on
the Sea Islands, and the regiment had its
baptism of fire. A small affair, but it proved
the men to be staunch. Shaw again writes to
his wife: "You don't know what a fortunate
day this has been for me and for us all, ex-
cepting some poor fellows who were killed and
wounded. We have fought at last alongside
of white troops. Two hundred of my men on
picket this morning were attacked by five regi-
ments of infantry, some cavalry, and a battery
of artillery. The Tenth Connecticut were on

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

their left, and say they would have had a bad
time if the Fifty-fourth men had not stood so
well. The whole division was under arms in fif-
teen minutes, and after coming up close in front
of us, the enemy, finding us so strong, fell back.
. . . General Terry sent me word he was highly
gratified with the behavior of our men, and
the oflScers and privates of other regiments
praise us very much. All this is very gratify-
ing to us personally, and a fine thing for the
colored troops. I know this mil give you
pleasure for it wipes out the remembrance of the
Darien affair, which you could not but grieve
over, though we were innocent participators."

The adjutant of the Fifty-fourth, who made
report of this skirmish to General Terry, well
expresses the feelings of loneliness that still
prevailed in that command: —

"The general's favorite regiment,'' writes
the adjutant,^ "the Twenty-fourth Massachu-

.^ G. W. James: " The Assault upon Fort Wagner,"
in War Papers read before the Commandery of the State
of Wisconsin^ Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the
United States. Milwaukee, 1891.

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

setts Infantry, one of the best that had so far
faced the rebel foe, largely oflBcered by Boston
men, was surrounding his headquarters. It
had been a living breathing suspicion with us
— perhaps not altogether justly — that all
white troops abhorred our presence in the
army, and that the Twenty-fourth would
rather hear of us in some remote comer of the
Confederacy than tolerate us in advance of
any battle in which they themselves were to
act as reserves or lookers-on. Can you not
then readily imagine the pleasure which I
felt as I alighted from my horse before General
Terry and his staflF — I was going to say his
unfriendly staflF, but of this I am not sure — to
report to him, with Colonel Shaw's compli-
ments, that we had repulsed the enemy with-
out the loss of a single inch of ground. General
Terry bade me mount again and tell Colonel
Shaw that he was proud of the conduct of his
men, and that he must still hold the ground
against any future sortie of the enemy. You
can even now share with me the sensation of

that moment of soldierly satisfaction."

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

The next night but one after this episode
was spent by the Fifty-fourth in disembark-
ing on Morris Island in the rain, and at noon
Colonel Shaw was able to report their arrival
to General Strong, to whose brigade he was
assigned. A terrific bombardment was play-
ing on Fort Wagner, then the most formidable
earthwork ever built, and the general, know-
ing Shaw's desire to place his men beside white
troops, said to him: "Colonel, Fort Wagner
is to be stormed this evening, and you may
lead the column, if you say Yes. Your men, I
know, are worn out, but do as you choose.'*
Shaw's face brightened. "Before answering
the general, he instantly turned to me,"
writes the adjutant, who reports the interview,
"and said, *Tell Colonel Hallowell to bring
up the Fifty-fourth immediately.'"

This was done, and just before nightfall the
attack was made. Shaw was serious, for he
knew the assault was desperate, and had a pre-
monition of his end. Walking up and down in
front of the regiment, he briefly exhorted them

to prove that they were men. Then he gave

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

the order: "Move in quick time till within
a hundred yards, then double quick and charge.
Forward!" and the Fifty-fourth advanced to
the storming, its colonel and colors at its head.
On over the sand, through a narrow defile
which broke up the formation, double quick
over the chevaux de frise, into the ditch and
over it, as best they could, and up the ram-
part with Fort Sumter, which had seen them,
playing on them, and Fort Wagner, now one
mighty mound of fire, tearing out their lives.
Shaw led from first to last. Gaining success-
fully the parapet, he stood there for a moment
with uplifted sword, shouting, "Forward,
Fifty-fourth! " and then fell headlong, with a
bullet through his heart. The battle raged for
nigh two hours. Regiment after regiment, fol-
lowing upon the Fifty-fourth, hurled them-
selves upon its ramparts, but Fort Wagner
was nobly defended, and for that night stood
safe. The Fifty-fourth withdrew after two-
thirds of its oflBcers and five-twelfths or nearly
half its men had been shot down or bayoneted
within the fortress or before its walls. It was

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

good behavior for a regiment, no one of whose
soldiers had had a musket in his hands more
than eighteen weeks, and which had seen the
enemy for the first time only two days before.

"The negroes fought gallantly," wrote a
Confederate oflScer, "and were headed by as
brave a colonel as ever lived."

As for the colonel, not a drum was heard
nor a f imeral note, not a soldier discharged his
farewell shot, when the Confederates buried
him, the morning after the engagement. His
body, half stripped of its clothing, and the
corpses of his daimtless negroes were flimg
into one common trench together, and the
sand was shovelled over them, without a stake
or stone to signalize the spot. In death as in
life, then, the Fifty-fourth bore witness to
the brotherhood of man. The lover of heroic
history could wish for no more fitting sepul-
chre for Shaw's magnanimous young heart.
There let his body rest, united with the forms
of his brave nameless comrades. There let
the breezes of the Atlantic sigh, and its gales
roar their requiem, while this bronze effigy

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

and these inscriptions keep their fame alive
long after you and I and all who meet here
are forgotten.

How soon, indeed, are human things for-
gotten! As we meet here this morning, the
Southern sun is shining on their place of burial,
and the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls
circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site.
But the great earthworks and their thunder-
ing cannon, the commanders and their fol-
lowers, the wild assault and repulse that for a
brief space made night hideous on that f ar-oflF
evening, have all sunk into the blue gulf of the
past, and for the majority of this generation
are hardly more than an abstract name, a
picture, a tale that is told. Only when some
yellow-bleached photograph of a soldier of
the 'sixties comes into our hands, with that
odd and vivid look of individuality due to the
moment when it was taken, do we realize the
concreteness of that by-gone history, and feel
how interminable to the actors in them were
those leaden-footed hours and years. The

photographs themselves erelong will fade

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

utterly, and books of history and monuments
like this alone will tell the tale. The great
war for the Union will be like the siege of
Troy; it will have taken its place amongst all
other "old, unhappy, far-oflF things and bat-
tles long ago/'

In all such events two things must be dis-
tinguished — the moral service of them from
the fortitude which they display. War has
been much praised and celebrated among us
of late as a school of manly virtue; but it is
easy to exaggerate upon this point. Ages ago,
war was the gory cradle of mankind, the grim-
featured nurse that alone could train our sav-
age progenitors into some semblance of social
virtue, teach them to be faithful one to an-
other, and force them to sink their selfish-
ness in wider tribal ends. War still excels in
this prerogative; and whether it be paid in
years of service, in treasure, or in life-bloody
the war tax is still the only tax that men un-
grudgingly will pay. How could it be other-
wise, when the survivors of one successful

massacre after another are the beings from

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

whose loins we and all our contemporary
races spring? Man is once for all a fighting
animal; centuries of peaceful history could
not breed the battle-instinct out of us; and
our pugnacity is the virtue least in need of
reinforcement by reflection, least in need of
orator's or poet's help.

What we really need the poet's and orator's
help to keep alive in us is not, then, the com-
mon and gregarious courage which Robert
Shaw showed when he marched with you,
men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more
lonely courage which he showed when he
dropped his warm commission in the glorious
Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes
of the Fifty-foiui:h. That lonely kind of
courage (civic courage as we call it in times of
peace) is the kind of valor to which the monu-
ments of nations should most of all be reared,
for the survival of the fittest has not bred it
into the bone of human beings as it has bred
military valor; and of five hundred of us who
could storm a battery side by side with others,

perhaps not one would be found ready to risk

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

his wordly fortunes all alone in resisting an
enthroned abuse. The deadliest enemies of
nations are not their foreign foes; they always ^
dwell within their borders. And from these
internal enemies civilization is always in need
of being saved. I The nation blest above all
nations is she in whom the civic genius of the '
people does the saving day by day, by acts
without external picturesqueness; by speak-
ing, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting
corruption swiftly; by good temper between
parties; by the people knowing true men when
they see them, and preferring them as leaders
to rabid partisans or empty quacks.) Such
nations have no need of wars to save them.
Their accoimts with righteousness are always
even; and God's judgments do not have to
overtake them fitfully in bloody spasms and
convulsions of the race.

The lesson that our war ought most of all to
teach us is the lesson that evils must be
checked in time, before they grow so great.
The Almighty cannot love such long-post-
poned accounts, or such tremendous settle-

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

ments. And surely He hates all settlements
that do such quantities of incidental devils'
work. Our present situation, with its rancors
and delusions, what is it but the direct out-
come of the added powers of government, the
corruptions and inflations of the war? Every
war leaves such miserable legacies, fatal seeds
of future war and revolution, unless the civic
virtues of the people save the State in time.

Robert Shaw had both kinds of virtue. As
he then led his regiment against Fort Wagner,
so surely would he now be leading us against all
lesser powers of darkness, had his sweet young
life been spared. You think of many as I
speak of one. For, North and South, how
many lives as sweet, immonumented for the
most part, conmiemorated solely in the hearts
of mourning mothers, widowed brides, or
friends did the inexorable war mow down ! In-
stead of the full years of natural service from
so many of her children, our coimtry coimts
but their poor memories, "the tender grace
of a day that is dead,'* lingering like echoes

of past music on the vacant air.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

But so and so only was it written that she
should grow sound again. From that fatal
earlier unsoundness those lives have brought
for North and South together permanent re-
lease. The warfare is accomplished; the in-
iquity is pardoned. No future problem can be
like that problem. No task laid on our chil-
dren can compare in difficulty with the task
with which their fathers had to deal. Yet as
we face the future, tasks enough await us.
The republic to which Robert Shaw and a
quarter of a million like him were faithful
unto death is no republic that can live at ease
hereafter on the interest of what they have won.
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic
genius of our people is its only bulwark, and
neither laws nor monuments, neither battle-
ships nor public libraries, nor great newspapers
nor booming stocks; neither mechanical in-
vention nor political adroitness, nor churches
nor imiversities nor civil service examina-
tions can save us from degeneration if the
inner mystery be lost. That mystery, at

once the secret and the glory of our English-

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

speaking race, consists in nothing but two
common habits, two inveterate habits carried
into public life, — habits so homely that th^
lend themselves to no rhetorical expression,
yet habits more precious, perhaps, than any
that the human race has gained. They can
never be too often pointed out or praised.
One of them is the habit of trained and disci-
plined good temper towards the opposite
party when it fairly wins its innings. It was
by breaking away from this habit that the
Slave States nearly wrecked our Nation. The
other is that of fierce and merciless resentment
toward every man or set of men who break the
public peace. By holding to this habit the
free States saved her life.

O my countrymen. Southern and Northern,
brothers hereafter, masters, slaves, and ene-
mies no more, let us see to it that both of those
heirlooms are preserved. So may our ran-
somed country, like the city of the promise,
Ke forever foursquare under Heaven, and the
ways of all the nations be lit up by its light.

IV
FRANCIS BOOTT

IV
FRANCIS BOOTT»

How often does it happen here in New Eng-
land that we come away from a funeral with a
feeling that the service has been insufficient.
K it be purely ritual, the individuality of the
departed friend seems to play too small a part
in it. If the minister conducts it in his own
fashion, it is apt to be too thin and monoto-
nous, and if he were not an intimate friend, too
remote and official. We miss direct discourse
of simple human aflFection about the person,
which we find so often in those lay speeches at
the grave of which in France they set us nowa-
days so many good examples. In the case of
the friend whose memory brings us together
on the present occasion, it was easy to organize
this supplementary service. Not everyone
leaves musical compositicms of his own to fill

. * An address delivered at the Memorial Service to
Francis Boott in the Harvard Chapel, Sunday, May 8,
1904. Printed in 88 Harvard Monthly, 125.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the hour with. And if we may believe that
spirits can know aught of what transpires in
the worid which they have forsaken, it must
please us all to think how dear old Francis
Boott^s shade must now be touched at seeing
in the Chapel of this imiversity to which his
feelings clung so loyally, his music and his life
at last become the subjects of cordial and ad-
miring recognition and commemorated by so
many of his neighbors. I can imagine nothing
at any rate of which the foreknowledge could
have given him deeper satisfaction. Shy and
sensitive, craving praise as every normal hu-
man being craves it, yet getting little, he had,
I think, a certain consciousness of living in the
shadow. I greatly doubt whether his day-
dreams ever went so far as to let him imagine a
service like this. Such a cordial and sponta-
neous outgoing towards him on our part would
surprise as much as it would delight him.

His life was private in the strongest sense of
the term. His contributions to literature were
all anonymous, book-reviews chiefly, or let-
ters and paragraphs in the New York Nation

FRANCIS BOOTT

on musical or literary topics. Good as was
their quality, and witty as was their form, —
his only independent volume was an almost
incredibly witty littje book of charades in
verse — they were too slight in bulk for com-
memoration; and it was only as a musical
composer that he touched on any really public
function. With so many of his compositions
sounding in your ears, it would be out of place,
even were I qualified, to attempt to character-
ize Mr. Boott's musical genius. Let it speak
for itself. I prefer to speak of the man and
friend whom we knew and whom so many of
us loved so dearly.

One of the usual classifications of men is
into those of expansive and those of conserva-
tive temper. The word conservative com-
monly suggests a dose of religious and political
prejudice, and a fondness for traditional opin-
ions. Mr. Boott was a liberal in politics and
theology; and all his opinions were self-made,
and as often as not at variance with every
tradition. Yet in a wider sense he was pro-
foundly conservative.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

. He respected bounds of ordinance, and em-
phasized the fact of limits. He knew well his
own limits. The knowledge of them was in
fact one of the things he lived by. To judge of
abstract philosophy, of sculpture and painting,
of certain lines of literary art, he admitted, was
not of his competency. But within the sphere
where he thought he had a right to judge, he
parted his likes from his dislikes and preserved
his preferences with a pathetic steadfastness.
He was faithful in age to the lights that lit his
youth, and obeyed at eve the voice obeyed at
prime, with a consistency most unusual. Else-
where the opinions of others might perplex
him, but he laughed and let them live. Within
his own appropriated sphere he was too scru-
pulous a lover of the truth not to essay to cor-
rect them, when he thought them erroneous.
A certain appearance comes in here of a self-
contradictory character, for Mr. Boott was
primarily modest and sensitive, and all his
interests and pre-occupations were with life's
refinements and delicacies. Yet one's mind al-
ways pictured him as a rugged sort of person,

FRANCIS BOOTT *

opposing successful resistance to all influences
that might seek to change his habits either of
feeling or of action. His admirable health,
his sober life, his regular walk twice a day,
whatever might be the weather, his invari-
able evenness of mood and opinion, so that,
when you once knew his range, he never dis-
appointed you — all this was at variance with
popular notions of the artistic temperament.
He was indeed, a man of reason, no romancer,
sentimentalist or dreamer, in spite of the fact
that his main interests were with the muses.
He was exact and accurate; aflfectionate, in-
deed, and sociable, but neither gregarious nor
demonstrative; and such words as "honest,'*
"sturdy," "faithful,'' are the adjectives first
to rise when one thinks of him. A friend said
to me soon after his death: "I seem still to see
Mr. Boott, with his two feet planted on the
ground, and his cane in front of him, making
of himself a sort of tripod of honesty and
veracity."

Old age changes men in diflFerent ways.
Some it softens; some it hardens; some it de-

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

generates; some it alters. Our old friend
Boott was identical in spiritual essence all his
life, and the eflFect of his growing old was not
to alter, but only to make the same man mel-
lower, more tolerant, more lovable. Sadder he
was, I think, for his life had grown pretty-
lonely; but he was a stoic and he never com-
plained either of losses or of years, and that
contagious laugh of his at any and every pre-
text for laughter rang as free and true upon his
deathbed as at any previous time of his ex-
istence.

Bom in 1813, he had lived through three
generations, and seen enormous social and
public changes. When a carpenter has a sur-
face to measure, he slides his rule along it, and
over all its peculiarities. I sometimes think
of Boott as such a standard rule against which
the changing fashions of humanity of the last
century might come to measurement. A char-
acter as healthy and definite as his, of whatso-
ever type it be, need only remain entirely true
to itself for a sufficient number of years, while

the outer conditions change, to grow into some-

FRANCIS BOOTT

thing like a common measure. Compared
with its repose and permanent fitness to con-
tinue, the changes of the generations seem
ephemeral and accidental. It remains the
standard, the rule, the term of comparison.
Mr. Boott's younger friends must often have
felt in his presence how much more vitally near
they were than they had supposed to the old
Boston long before the war, to the older Har-
vard, to the older Rome and Florence. To
grow old after his manner is of itself to grow
important.

I said that Mr. Boott was not demonstra-
tive or sentimental. Tender-hearted he was
and faithful as few men are, in friendship.
He made new friends, and dear ones, in the
very last years of his life, and it is good to
think of him as having had that consolation.
The will in which he surprised so many per-
sons by remembering them — "one of the
only purely beautiful wills I have ever read,'*
said a lawyer, — showed how much he cared
at heart for many of us to whom he had rarely

made express professions of affection.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Good-by, then, old friend. We shall never-
more meet the upright figure, the blue eye,
the hearty laugh, upon these Cambridge
streets. But in that wider worid of being of
which this little Cambridge worid of ours
forms so infinitesimal a part, we may be sure
that all our spirits and their missions here will
continue in some way to be represented, and
that ancient human loves will never lose their
own.

THOMAS DAVIDSON: A

KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE

INTELLECTUAL LIFE.

THOMAS DAVIDSON: A

KNIGHT-ERRANT OP THE

INTELLECTUAL LIPE.i

I WISH to pay my tribute to the memory of a
Scottish-American friend of mine who died
five years ago, a man of a character extraor-
dinarily and intensely human, in spite of the
fact that he was classed by obituary articles
in England among the twelve most learned
men of his time.

It would do no honor to Thomas Davidson's
memory not to be frank about him. He
handled people without gloves, himself, and
one has no right to retouch his photograph
until its features are softened into insipidity.
He had defects and excesses which he wore
upon his sleeve, so that everyone could see
them. They made him many enemies, and if
one liked quarrelling he was an easy man to

* First published iq McClure'a Magazine for May,
1905.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

quarrel with. But his heart and mind held
treasures of the rarest. He had a genius for
friendship. Money, place, fashion, fame, and
other vulgar idols of the tribe had no hold on
his imagination. He led his own life abso-
lutely, in whatever company he foimd himself,
and the intense individualism which he taught
by word and deed, is the lesson of which our
generation is perhaps most in need.
I All sorts of contrary adjectives come up as
I think of him. To begin with, there was
something physically rustic which suggested
to the end his farm-boy origin. His voice was
sweet and its Scottish cadences most musical,
and the extraordinary sociability of his nature
made friends for him as much among women
as among men; he had, moreover, a sort of
physical dignity; but neither in dress nor in
maAner did he ever grow quite "gentlemanly "
or Salonfdhig in the conventional and oblit-
erated sense of the terms. He was too cordial
and emphatic for that. His broad brow, his
big chest, his bright blue eyes, his volubility in

talk and laughter told a tale of vitality far

THOMAS DAVIDSON

beyond the common; but his fine and nervous
hands, and the vivacity of all his reactions
suggested a degree of sensibility that one
rarely finds conjoined with so robustly animal
a frame. The great peculiarity of Davidson
did indeed consist in this combination of the
acutest sensibilities with massive faculties of
thought and action, a combination which,
when the thought and actions are important,
gives to the worid its greatest men.

Davidson's native mood was happy. He
took optimistic views of life and of his own
share in it. A sort of permanent satisfaction
radiated from his face; and this expression
of inward glory (which in reality was to a
large extent structural and not " expressive "
at all) was displeasing to many new acquain-
tances on whom it made an impression of too
much conceit. The impression of conceit was
not diminished in their eyes by the freedom
with which Davidson contradicted, corrected
and reprehended other people. A longer ac-
quaintance invariably diminished the impres-
sion. But it must be confessed that T. D.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

never was exactly humble-minded, and that
the solidity of his self -consciousness withstood
strains imder which that of weaker men would
have crumbled. The malady which finally
killed him was one of the most exhausting to
the nervous tone to which our flesh is subject,
and it wore him out before it ended him. He
told me of the paroxysms of motiveless ner-
vous dread which used to beset him in the
night-watches. Yet these never subdued his
stalwartness, nor made him a " sick-soul '* in
the theological sense of that appelation. " God
is afraid of me," was the phrase by which he
described his well-being to me one morning
when his night had been a good one, and he
was feeling so cannibalistic that he thought he
might get well.

There are men whose attitude is always
that of seeking for truth, and men who on the
contrary always believe that they have the
root of it already in them. Davidson was of
the latter class. Like his countrymen, Carlyle
and Ruskin, he felt himself to be in the posses-
sion of something, whether articulate or as yet

THOMAS DAVIDSON

inarticulated by himself, that authorized him
(and authorized him with imcommon open-
ness and frequency) to condemn the errors of
others. I think that to the last he never fully
extricated this philosophy. It was a t«a-
den<y, a faith in a direction, which gave him
an active persuasion that other directions were
false, but of which the central insight never
got fully formulated, but remained in a state
which Frederic Myers would have called sub-
liminal. He varied to a certain extent his
watchwords and his heroes. When I first knew
him all was Aristotle. Later all was Rosmini.
Later still Rosmini seemed forgotten. He
knew so many writers that he grew fond of
very various ones and had a strange tolerance
for systematizers and dogmatizers whom, as
the consistent individualist that he was, he
should have disliked. Hegel, it is true, he
detested; but he always spoke with reverence
of Kant. Of Mill and Spencer he had a low
opinion; and when I lent him Paulsen's Intro-
duction to Philosophy (then just out), as an

example of a kind of eclectic thought that

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

seemed to be growing, and with which I largely-
sympathized, he returned it with richer ex-
pressions of disdain than often fell even from
his lips: "It 's the shabbiest, seediest pre-
tence at a philosophy I ever dreamed of as
possible. It 's like a man dressed in a black
coat so threadbare as to be all shiny. The
most poverty-stricken, out-at-elbows thing I
ever read. A perfect monument of seediness
and shabbiness," etc.

The truth is that Davidson, brought up on
the older classical traditions, never outgrew
those habits of judging the world by purely
aesthetic criteria which men fed on the sciences
of nature arie so willing to abandon. Even if a
philosophy were true, he could easily fail to
relish it unless it showed a certain formal no-
bility and dogmatic pretension to finality.
But I must not describe him so much from my
own professional point of view — it is as a
vessel of life at large that one ought to keep
him in remembrance.

He came to Boston from St. Louis, where

he had been teaching, about the year 1873.

THOMAS DAVIDSON

He was ruddy and radiant, and I soon saw
much of him, though at first it was without
the thoroughness of sympathy which we after-
wards acquired and which made us overflow,
on meeting after long absences, into such laugh-
ing greetings as: "Ha! you old thief! Ha!
you old blackguard!". — pure "contrast-
eflfects'* of affection and familiarity passing
beyond their bounds. At that time I saw
most of him at a little philosophical club which
used to meet every fortnight at his rooms in
Temple Street in Boston. Of the other mem-
bers, J. Elliot Cabot and C. C. Everett, are
now dead — I will not name the survivors.
We never worked out harmonious conclusions.
Davidson used to crack the whip of Aristotle
over us; and I remember that, whatever topic
was formally appointed for the day, we in-
variably wound up with a quarrel about Space
and Space-perception. The Club had existed
before Davidson's advent. The previous year
we had gone over a good part of HegeFs larger
Logic, under the self-constituted leadership

of two young business men from Illinois, who

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

had become enthusiastic Hegelians and, know-
ing ahnost no German, had actually possessed
themselves of a manuscript translation of the
entire three volumes of Logic, made by an ex-
traordinary Pomeranian immigrant, named
Brockmeyer. These disciples were leaving
business for the law. and studying at the Har-
vard law-school; but they saw the whole uni-
verse through Hegelian spectacles, and a more
admirable homo unius libri than one of them,
with his three big folios of Hegelian manu-
script, I have never had the good fortune to
know.

I forget how Davidson was earning his sub-
sistence at this time. He did some lecturing
and private teaching, but I do not think they
were great in amount. In the springs and
summers he frequented the coast, and indulged
in long swimming bouts and salt-water inmier-
sions, which seemed to agree with him greatly.
His sociability was boundless, and his time
seemed to belong to anyone who asked for it.

I soon conceived that such a man would be

invaluable in Harvard University — a kind of

THOMAS DAVIDSON

Socrates, a devotee of truth and lover of
youth, ready to sit up to any hour, and drink
beer and talk with anyone, lavish of learning
and counsel, a contagious example of how
lightly and humanly a burden of erudition
might be borne upon a pair of shoulders. In
faculty-business he might not nm well in
harness, but as an inspiration and ferment of
character, as an example of the ranges of com-
bination of scholarship with manhood that are
possible, his influence on the students would
be priceless.

I do not know whether this scheme of mine
could under any circumstances have been car-
ried out. In point of fact it was nipped in the
bud by T. D. himself. A natural chair for him
would have been Greek philosophy. Unfor-
tunately, just at the decisive hour, he offended
our Greek department by a savage onslaught
on its methods, which, without taking any-
one's counsel, he sent to the Atlantic Monthly y
whose editor printed it. This, with his other
unconventionalisms, made advocating his cause

more diflficult, and the university authorities,

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

never, I believe, seriously thought of an ap-
pointment for him.

I believe that in this case, as in one or two
others like it, which I might mention. Harvard
University lost a great opportunity. Organi-
zation and method mean much, but conta-
gious human characters mean more in a uni-
versity, where a few undisciplinables like
T. D. may be infinitely more precious than a
faculty-full of orderly routinists. As to what
Davidson might have become under the con-
ventionalizing influences of an official position,
it would be idle to speculate.

As things fell out, he became more and more
unconventional and even developed a sort of
antipathy to all regular academic life. It sub-
dued individuality, he thought, and made for
Philistinism. He earnestly dissuaded his
young friend Bakewell from accepting a pro-
fessorship; and I well remember one dark
night in the Adirondacks, after a good dinner
at a neighbor's, the eloquence with which, as
we trudged down-hill to his own quarters with

a lantern, he denounced me for the musty and

, THOMAS DAVIDSON

mouldy and generally ignoble academicism
of my character. Never before or since, I
fancy, has the air of the Adirondack wilder-
ness vibrated more repugnantly to a vo-
cable than it did that night to the word
** academicism."

_ Yet Davidson himself was always essen-
tially a teacher. He must give forth, inspire,
and have the young about him. After leav-
ing Boston for Europe and Africa, founding
the Fellowship of the New Life in London and
New York (the present Fabian Society in
England is its offshoot), he hit upon the plan
which pleased him best of all when, in 1882 or
thereabouts, he bought a couple of hundred
acres on East Hill, which closes the beautiful
Keene Valley in the Adirondacks, on the north,
and foimded there, at the foot of Hurricane
Mountain, his place "Glenmore" audits
"Sunmier School of the Culture Sciences.''
Although the primeval forest has departed
from its immediate vicinity, the region is still
sylvan, the air is sweet and strong and almost

alpine in quality, and the mountain panorama

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

spread before one is superlative. Davidson
showed a business faculty which I should
hardly have expected from him, in organizing
his settlement. He built a number of cottages,
pretty in design and of the simplest construc-
tion, and disposed them well for effect. He
turned a couple of farm buildings which were
on the grounds into a lecturing place and a
refectory; and there, arriving in early April
and not leaving till late in November, he spent
the happiest part of all his later years, sur-
rounded during the summer months by col-
leagues, friends, and listeners to lectures, and
in the spring and fall by a few independent
women who were his faithful friends, and who
had found East Hill a congenial residence.

Twice I went up with T. D. to open the
place in April. I remember leaving his fire-
side one night with three ladies who were also
early comers, and finding the thermometer at
8° Fahrenheit and a tremendous gale blowing
the snow about us. Davidson loved these
blustering vicissitudes of climate. In the

early years the brook was never too cold for

THOMAS DAVIDSON

him to bathe in, and he spent days in rambling
over the hills and up the glens and through
the forest.

His own cottage was full of books whose use
was free to all who visited the settlement. It
stood high on a hill in a grove of silver-birches
and looked upon the Western Mountains;
and it always seemed *to me an ideal dwelling
for such a bachelor-scholar. Here in May
and June he became almost one with the re-
surgent vegetation. Here, in October, he was
a witness of the jewelled pageant of the dying
foliage, and saw the hillsides reeking, as it were,
and aflame with ruby and gold and emerald
and topaz. One September day in 1900, at
the " Kurhaus '' at Nauheim, I took up a copy
of the Paris New York Herald, and read in
capitals: " Death of Professor Thomas David-
son.'' I had well known how ill he was, yet
such was his vitality that the shock was wholly
unexpected. I did not realize till that moment
how much that free companionship with him
every spring and autumn, surroxmded by that

beautiful nature, had signified to me, or how

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

big a piece would be subtracted from my life
by its cessation.

Davidson's capacity for imparting infor-
mation seemed endless. There were few sub-
jects, especially " humanistic " subjects, in
which at some time or other he had not taken
an interest; and as everything that had ever
touched him was instantaneously in reach of
his onmipotent memory, he easily became a
living dictionary of reference. As such all his
friends were wont to use him. He was, for ex-
ample, never at a loss to supply a quotation.
He loved poetry passionately, and the sympa-
thetic voice with which he would recall page
after page of it — English, French, German,
or Italian — is a thing always to be remem-
bered. But notwithstanding the instructive
part he played in every conceivable conversa-
tion, he was never prolix, and he never "lec-
tured.^'

From Davidson I learned what immunities
a perfect memory bestows upon one. I never
could discover when he amassed his learning,
for he never seemed ** occupied." The secret

THOMAS DAVIDSON

of it was that any odd time would do, for
he never had to acquire a thing twice over.
He avoided stated hours of work on principle.
Reprehending (mildly) a certain chapter of my
own on "Habit," he said that it was a fixed
rule with him to form no regular habits. When
he f oimd himself in danger of settling into even
a good one, he made a point of interrupting it.
Habits and methods make a prisoner of a man,
destroy his readiness, keep him from answering
the call of the fresh moment. Individualist
ct outrancey Davidson felt that every hour was
an imique entity, to whose claims one should
lie open. Thus he was never abstracted or pre-
occupied, but always seemed, when with you,
as if you were the one person whom it was
then right to attend to.

It was this individualistic religion that made
T. D., democrat as he nevertheless was, so
hostile to all socialisms and administrative
panaceas. Life must be flexible. You ask for
a free man, and these Utopias give you an "in-
terchangeable part," with a fixed number, in a

rule-bound organism. The real thing to aim at

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

is liberation of the inner interests. Give a
man possession of a souU and he will work out
his own happiness under any set of conditions.
Accordingly, when, in the penultimate year of
his life, he proposed his night-school to a meet-
ing of young East-Side workingmen in New
York, he told them that he had no sympathy
whatever with the griefs of "labor,'' that out-
ward circumstances meant nothing in his eyes;
that through their individual wills and intel-
lects they could share, just as they were, in the
highest spiritual life of humanity, and that he
was there to help them severally to that
privilege.

The enthusiasm with which they responded
speaks volumes, both for his genius as a teacher
and for the sanity of his position. A small
posthumous book of articles by Davidson and
of letters written from Glenmore to his class,
just published, with an introduction by his
disciple Professor Bakewell,^ gives a full ac-
count of the experiment, and ought to stand

^ " The Education of the Wage-Earners." Boston,
Ginn & Company, 1904.

THOMAS DAVIDSON

as a model and inspirer to similar attempts the
world over. Davidson's idea of the universe
was that of a republic of immortal spirits, the
chief business of whom in their several grades
of existence, should be to know and love and
help one another. "Creeds are nothing, life is
everything. . . . You can do far more by pre-
senting to the world the example of noble social
relations than by enumerating any set of
principles. Know all you can, love all you
can, do all you can — that is the whole duty
of man. ... Be friends, in the truest sense,
each to the other. There is nothing in all the
world like friendship, when it is deep and real.
. . . The divine ... is a republic of self-
existent spirits, each seeking the realization of
its ideas through love, through intimacy with
all the rest, and finding its heaven in such
intimacy."

We all say and think that we believe this
sort of thing;' but Davidson believed it really
and actively, and that made all the difference.
When the young wage-earners whom he

addressed f oimd that here was a man of meas-

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

ureless learning ready to give his soul to them,
as if he had nothing else to do with it, life's
ideal possibilities widened to their view. When
he was taken from them, they f omided in New
York the Thomas Davidson Society, for study
and neighborhood work, which will probably
become perpetual, and of which his epistles
from Glenmore will bp the rule, and keep the
standards set by him from degenerating —
unless, indeed, the Society should some day
grow too rich, of which there is no danger at
present, and from which may Heaven long
preserve it. In one of his letters to the Class,
Davidson sums up the results of his own ex-
perience of life in twenty maxims, as follows:

1. Rdy upon your own energies, and do not
wait for, or dq^end on other people.

2. Cling with all your mi^t to your own
highest ideals, and do not be led astray by such
vulgar aims as wealth, position, popularity. Be
yourself.

3. Your worth consists in what you are, and not
in what you have. What you are will show in
what you do.

THOMAS DAVIDSON

4. Never fret, repine, or envy. Do not make
yourself unhappy by comparing your circimi-
tancs with those of more fortunate people; but
make the most of the opportunities you have.
Employ profitably every moment.

5. Associate with the noblest people you can
find; read the best books; live with the mighty.
But learn to be happy alone.

6. Do not believe that all greatness and heroism
are in the past. Learn to discover princes, proph-
ets, heroes, and saints among the people about you.
Be assured they are there.

7. Be on earth what good people hope to be in
heaven.

8. Cultivate ideal friendships, and gather into
an intimate circle all your acquaintances who are
hungering for truth and right. Remember that
heaven itself can be nothing but the intimacy of
pure and noble souls.

9. Do not shrink from any useful or kindly act,
however hard or repellent it may be. The worth
of acts is measured by the spirit in which they are
performed.

10. If the world despise you because you do not
follow its ways, pay no heed to it. But be sure your
way is right.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

11. If a thousand plans fail, be not disheartened.
As long as your purposes are right, you have not
failed.

12. Examine yourself every night, and see
whether you have progressed in knowledge, sym-
pathy, and helpfulness during the day. Count
every day a loss in which no progress has been
made.

13. Seek enjoyment in energy, not in dalliance.
Our worth is measured solely by what we do.

14. Let not your goodness be professional; let
it be the simple, natural outcome of your charac*-
ter. Therefore cultivate charact^.

15. If you do wrong, say so, and make what
atonement you can. That is true nobleness.
Have no moral debts.

16. When in doubt how to act, ask yourself.
What does nobility conmiand? Be on good terms
with yourself.

17. Look for no reward for goodness but good-
ness itself. Remember heaven and hell are utterly
immoral institutions, if they are meant as reward
and punishment.

18. Give whatever countenance and help you
can to every movement and institution that is
working for good. Be not sectarian.

THOMAS DAVIDSON

19. Wear no placards, within or without. Be
human fully.

20. Never be satisfied until you have under-
stood the meaning of the world, and the purpose
of our own life, and have reduced your world to a
rational cosmos.

One of the "placards " Davidson tried
hardest to keep his Society from wearing was
that of "Socialism.'* Yet no one felt more
deeply than he the evils of rapacious individ-
ual competition. Spontaneously and flexibly
organized social settlements or communities,
with individual leaders as their centres, seem
to have been his ideal, each with its own reli-
gious or ethical elements of discipline. The
present isolation of the family is too inhuman.
The ideal type of future life, he thought, will be
something like the monastery, with the family
instead of the individual, for its imit.

Leveller upwards of men as Davidson was,

upon the intellectual and moral level, he

seemed wholly without that sort of religion

which makes so many of our contemporary

anarchists think that they ought to dip, at

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

least, into some manual occupation, in order
to share the common burden of humanity.
I never saw T. D. work with his hands in any
way. He accepted material services of all
kinds without apology, as if he were a patri-
cian, evidently feeling that if he played his
own more intellectual part rightly, society
could make no further claim upon him.

This confidence that the life of the spirit is
the absolutely highest, made Davidson serene
about his outward fortimes. Pecuniary worry
would not tally with his program. He had a
very small provision against a rainy day, but
he did little to increase it. He used to write
as many articles and give as many "lectures,"
"talks," or "readings " every winter as would
suflBce to pay the year's expenses, and there-
after he refused additional invitations, and
repaired to Glenmore as early in the spring as
possible. I could but admire the temper he
showed when the principal building there was
one night burned to ashes. There was no in-
surance on it, and it would cost a couple of

thousand dollars to replace it. Excitable as

THOMAS DAVIDSON

Davidson was about small contrarieties, he
watched this fire without a syllable of impa-
tience. Plaie d'argent rCest pas mmieUe^ he
seemed to say, and if he felt sharp regrets, he
disdained to express them.

No more did care about his literary reputa-
tion trouble him. In the ordinary greedy
sense, he seemed quite free from ambition.
During his last years he had prepared a large
amoimt of material for that history of the in-
teraction of Greek, Christian, Hebrew, and
Arabic thought upon one another before the
revival of learning, which was to be his Tnag-
num ojyus. It was a territory to which, in its
totality, few living minds had access, and in
which a certain proprietary feeling was natural.
Knowing how short his life might be, I once
asked him whether he felt no concern lest the
work already done by him should be frustrate,
from the lack of its necessary complement, in
case he were suddenly cut oflf . His answer sur-
prised me by its indiflference. He would work
as long as he lived, he said, but not allow him-
self to worry, and look serenely at whatever

MEMORIES AND STUDLES

might be the outcome. This seemed to me un-
commonly high-minded. I think that David-
son's conviction of immortality had much to
do with such a superiority to accidents. On
the surface, and towards small things, he was
irritable enough, but the undertone of his
character was remarkable for equanimity.
He showed it in his final illness, of which the
misery was really atrocious. There were no
general complaints or lamentations about the
personal situation or the arrest to his career.
It was the human lot and he must even
bear it; so he kept his mind upon objective
matters.

i But, as I said at the outset, the paramount
thing in Davidson in my eyes was his capacity
for friendship. His friends were innumerable —
boys and girls and old boys and old girls. Pa-
pists and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles, mar-
ried and single; and he cared deeply for each
one of them, admiring them often too extrava-
gantly. What term can name those recurrent
waves of delighted laughter that expressed his
greeting, beginning from the moment he saw

THOMAS DAVIDSON

you, and accompanying his words continu-
ously, as if his pleasure in you were inter-
minable? His hand too, stretched out when
yards away, so that a coimtry neighbor said
it reached farther than any hand he ever met
with. The odd thing was that friendship in
Davidson seemed so little to interfere with
criticism. Persons with whom intercourse was
one long contradiction on his part, and who
appeared to annoy him to extermination, he
none the less loved tenderly, and enjoyed liv-
ing with them. " He 's the most utterly selfish,
illiberal and narrow-hearted human being I
ever knew," I heard him once say of someone,
"and yet he's the dearest, nicest fellow living."
His enthusiastic belief in any young person
who gave a promise of genius was touching.
Naturally a man who is willing, as he was, to
be a prophet, always finds some women who
are willing to be disciples. I never heard of any
sentimental weakness in Davidson in this re-
lation, save possibly in one case. They
wanned .themselves at the fire of his soul, and

he told them truths without acconunodation.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

"You *re farther oflF from God than any woman
I ever heard of." "Nay, if you believe in a
protective tariff, you *re in hell already, though
you may not know it." "You had a fine hys-
terical time last night, did n't you, when Miss
B was brought up from the ravine with her
dislocated shoulder." To Miss B he said:
"I don't pity you. It served you right for
being so ignorant as to go there at that
hour." Seldom, strange to say, did the re-
cipients of these deliverances seem to resent
them.

What with Davidson's warmth of heart and
sociability, I used to wonder at his never
marrying. Two years before his death he told
me the reason — an unhappy youthful love-
affair in Scotland. Twice in later life, he said,
temptation had come to him, and he had had
to make his decision. When he had come to
the point, he had felt each time that the tie
with the dead girl was prohibitive. "When
two persons have known each other as we did,"
he said, "neither can ever fully belong to a

stranger. So it would n't do." "It would n't

100

THOMAS DAVIDSON

do, it would n't do!'' he repeated, as we laj?'
on the hillside, in a tone so musically tender
that it chimes in my ear now as I write down
his confession. It can surely be no breach of
confidence to publish it — it is too creditable
to the profundity of Davidson's affections. As
I knew him, he was one of the purest of human
beings.

If one asks, now, what the value of Thomas
Davidson was, what was the general signifi-
cance of his life, apart from his particular
books and articles, I have to say that it lay in
the example he set to us all of how, even in
the midst of this intensely worldly social sys-
tem of ours, in which each human interest is
organized so collectively and so comimercially,
a single man may still be a knight-errant of the
intellectual life, and preserve full freedom in
the midst of sociability. Extreme as was his
need of friends, and faithful as he was to them,
he yet lived mainly in reliance on his private
inspiration. Asking no man's permission,
bowing the knee to no tribal idol, renouncing

the conventional channels of recognition, he

101

:,:: MEMORIES AND STUDIES

f %

J,l showed us how a life devoted to purely intel-

••/lectual ends could be beautifully wholesome
outwardly, and overflow with inner content-
ment. Fortunately this type of man is recur-
rent, and from generation to generation, liter-
ary history preserves examples. But it is in-
frequent enough for few of us to have known
more than one example — I coimt myself
happy in knowing two and a half! The mem-
ory of Davidson will always strengthen my
faith in personal freedom and its spontaneities,
and make me less unqualifiedly respectful than
ever of "Civilization,'' with its herding and
branding, licensing and degree-giving, author-
izing and appointing, and in general regulating
and administering by system the lives of
human beings. Surely the individual, the
person in the singular number, is the more
fimdamental phenomenon, and the social in-
stitution, of whatever grade, is but secondary
and ministerial. Many as are the interests
which social systems satisfy, always imsatis-
fied interests remain over, and among them

are interests to which system, as such, does

102

THOMAS DAVIDSON

violence whenever it lays its hand upon us.
The best Commonwealth will always be the
one that most cherishes the men who represent
the residual interests, the one that leaves the
largest scope to their peculiarities.

103

HERBERT SPENCER'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

HERBERT SPENCER'S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY!

IjroD moves in a mysterious way his won-
ders to perform." If the greatest of all his
wonders be the himian individual, the richness
with which the specimens thereof are diver-
sified,, the limitless variety of outline, from
gothic to classic or flowing arabesque, the
contradictory nature of the filling, composed
of little and great, of comic, heroic, and pa-
thetic elements blended inextricably, in per-
sonalities all of whom can gOj and go success-
fully, must surely be reckoned the supreme
miracle of creative ingenuity* Rarely has
Nature performed an odder or more Dickens-
like feat than when she deliberately designed,
or accidentally stmnbled into, the personality
of Herbert Spencer. Greatness and smallness

^ Written upon the publication of Herbert Spen-
cer's "Autobiography." Published in the Atlantic
Monthly for July, 1904.

107

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

surely never Kved so closely in one skin to-
gether.

The opposite verdicts passed upon his work
by his contemporaries bear witness to the
extraordinary mingling of defects and merits
in his mental character. Here are a few,
juxtaposed: —

"A philosophic saw-mill.'' — "The most
capacious and powerful thinker of all time."
I "The ' Arry ' of philosophy." — "Aristotle
and his master were not more beyond the
pygmies who preceded them than he is beyond
Aristotle."

" Herbert Spencer's chromo-philosophy." —
"No other man that has walked the earth has
so wrought and written himself into the life
of the world."

"The touch of his mind takes the living
flavor out of everything." — "He is as much
above and beyond all the other great philoso-
phers who have ever lived as the telegraph is
beyond the carrier-pigeon, or the railway be-
yond the sedan chair."

"He has merely combined facts which we
108

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

knew before into a huge fantastic contradic-
tory system, which hides its nakedness and
emptiness partly under the veil of an imposing
terminology, and partly in the primeval fog."
— "His contributions are of a depth, profun-
dity, and magnitude which have no parallel in
the history of mind. Taking but one — and
one only — of his transcendent reaches of
thought, — namely, that referring to the posi-
tive sense of the Unknown as the basis of reli-
gion, — it may unhesitatingly be aflSrmed
that the analysis and synthesis by which he
advances to the almost supernal grasp of this
mighty truth give a sense of power and reach
verging on the pretemattu^al."

Can the two thick volumes of autobiography
which Mr. Spencer leaves behind him explain
such discrepant appreciations? Can we find
revealed in them the higher synthesis which
reconciles the contradictions? Partly they
do explain, I think, and even justify, both kinds
of judgment upon their author. But I con-
fess that in the last resort I still feel baflBed.

In Spencer, as in every concrete individual,

109

J^EMORIES AND STUDIES

there is a uniqueness that defies all formula-
tion. We can feel the touch of it and recog-
nize its taste, so to speak, relishing or disliking,
as the case may be, but we can give no ulti-
mate account of it, and we have in the end
simply to admire the Creator*

Mr. Spencer's task, the unification of all
knowledge into an articulate system, was
more ambitious than anything attempted
since St. Thomas or Descartes. Most thinkers
have confined themselves either to generalities
or to details, but Spencer addressed himself
to everything. He dealt in logical, meta-
physical, and ethical first principles, in cosmog-
ony and geology, in physics, and chemistry
after a fashion, in biology, psychology, so-
ciology, poKtics, and aesthetics. Hardly any
subject can be named which has not at least
been touched on in some one of his many
volumes. His erudition was prodigious. His
civic conscience and his social courage both
were admirable. His life was pure. He was
devoted to truth and usefuhiess, and his char-
acter was wholly free from envy and malice

110

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

(though not from contempt), and from the
perverse egoisms that so often go with great-
ness.

Surely, any one hearing this veracious
enumeration would think that Spencer must
have been a rich and exuberant human being.
Such wide curiosities must have gone with the
widest sympathies, and such a powerful har-
mony of character, whether it were a congeni-
tal gift, or were acquired by spiritual wrestling
and eating bread with tears, must in any case
have been a glorious spectacle for the beholder.
Since Goethe, no such ideal human being can
have been visible, walking our poor earth.

Yet when we turn to the " Autobiography,"
the self -confession which we find is this : An old-
maidish personage, inhabiting boarding-houses,
equable and lukewarm in all his tastes and
passions, having no desultory curiosity, show-
ing little interest in either books or people.
A petty fault-finder and stickler for trifles,
devoid in youth of any wide designs on life,
fond only of the more mechanical side of

things, yet drifting as it were involimtarily into

111

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the possession of a world-formula which by
dint of his extraordinary pertinacity he pro-
ceeded to apply to so many special cases that
it made him a philosopher in spite of himself.
He appears as modest enough, but with a curi-
ous vanity in some of his deficiencies, — his
lack of desultory interests, for example, and
his nonconformity to reigning customs. He
gives a queer sense of having no emotional
perspective, as if small things and large were
on the same plane of vision, and equally com-
manded his attention. In spite of his pro-
fessed dislike of monotony; one feels an aw-
fully monotonous quality in him; and in spite
of the fact that invalidism condemned him to
avoid thinking, and to saunter and potter
through large parts of every day, one finds no
twilight region in his mind, and no capacity
for dreaminess or passivity. All parts of it are
filled with the same noonday glare, like a dry
desert where every grain of sand shows singly,
and there are no mysteries or shadows.
[ "Look on this picture and on that," and
answer how they can be compatible.

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

For one thing, Mr. Spencer certainly writes
himself down too much. He complains of a
poor memory, of an idle disposition, of a gen-
eral dislike for reading. Doubtless there have
been more gifted men in all these respects.
But when Spencer once buckled to a particu-
lar task, his memory, his industry, and his
reading went beyond those of the most gifted.
He had excessive sensibility to stimulation by
a challenge, and he had preeminent perti-
nacity. When the notion of his philosophic
system once grasped him, it seemed to possess
itself of every effective fibre of his being. No
faculty in him was left imemployed, — nor,
on the other hand, was anything that his phi-
losophy could contain left imstated. Roughly
speaking, the task and the man absorbed each
other without residuum.

Compare this type of mind with such an
opposite type as Ruskin's, or even as J. S.
Mill's, or Huxley's, and you realize its pecul-
iarity. Behind the work of those others was
a background of overflowing mental tempta-
tions. The men loom larger than all their

113

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

publications, and leave an impression of unex-
pressed potentialities. Spencer tossed all his
inexpressibilities into the Unknowable, and
gladly turned his back on them forever. His
books seem to have expressed all that there
was to express in his character.

He is very frank about this himself. No
Sturm und Drang Periode, no problematic
stage of thought, where the burden of the
much-to-be-straightened exceeds the powers of
straightening.

When George Eliot uttered surprise at
seeing no lines on his forehead, his reply
was: —

"I suppose it is because I am never puzzled."
— "It has never been my way,'' he continues,
"to set before myself a problem and puzzle out
an answer. The conclusions at which I have
from time to time arrived, have not been ar-
rived at as solutions of questions raised; but
have been arrived at imawares — each as the
ultimate outcome of a body of thought which
slowly grew from a germ. Some direct obser-
vation, or some fact met with in reading, would

114

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

dwell with me; apparently because I had a
sense of its significance. ... A week after-
wards, possibly, the matter would be remem-
bered; and with further thought about it,
might occur a recognition of some wider appli-
cation: new instances being aggregated with
those already noted. Again, after an interval,"
etc., etc. "And thus, little by little, in imob-
trusive ways, without conscious intention or
appreciable effort, there would grow up a co-
herent and organized theory" (vol. i, page
464).

A sort of mill, this, woimd up to grind in
a certain way, and irresponsive otherwise.

"To apply day after day merely with the
general idea of acqui!ring information, or of in-
creasing ability, was not in me." "Anything
like passive receptivity is foreign to my nature;
and there results an unusually small tendency
to be affected by others' thoughts. It seems
as though the fabric of my conclusions had in
all cases to be developed from within. Mate-
rial which could be taken in and organized so

as to form part of a coherent structure, there

115

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

was always a readiness to receive. But ideas
and sentiments of alien kinds, or nnorganizable
kinds, were, if not rejected, yet accepted with
indifference, and soon dropped away." "It
has always been out of the question for me to
go on reading a book the fundamental principles
of which I entirely dissent from. I take it for
granted that if the fundamental principles are
wrong the rest cannot be right; and thereupon
cease reading — being, I suspect, rather glad
of an excuse for doing so." " Systematic
books of a political or ethical kind, written
from points of view quite imlike my own, were
either not consulted at all, or else they were
glanced at and thereafter disregarded " (vol.
i, pages 215, 277, 289, 350).

There is pride rather than compimction
in these confessions. Spencer's mind was so
narrowly systematized, that he was at last
almost incapable of believing in the reality of
alien ways of. feeling. The invariable arro-
gance of his replies to criticisms shows his ab-
solute self-confidence. Every opinion in the

world had to be articulately right or articu-

116.

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

lately wrong, — so proved by some principle
or other of his infallible system.

He confesses freely his own inflexibility and
censoriousness. His accoimt of his father
makes one believe in the fatality of heredity.
Bom of old nonconformist stock, the elder
Spencer was a man of absolute punctuality.
Always he would step out of his way to kick a
stone oflf the pavement lest somebody should
trip over it. K he saw boys quarrelling he
stopped to expostulate; and he never could
pass a man who was ill-treating a horse without
trying to make him behave better. He would
never take oflf his hat to any one, no matter of
what rank, nor could he be induced to ad-
dress any one as "Esquire " or as "Reverend."
He would never put on any sign of mourning,
even for father and mother; and he adhered
to one style of coat and hat throughout all
changes of fashion. Improvement was his
watchword always and everywhere. Whatever
he wrote had to be endlessly corrected, and his
love of detail led all his life to his neglecting

large ends in his care for small ones. A good

117

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

heart, but a pedantic conscience, and a sort of
energetically mechanical intelligence.

Of himself Herbert Spencer says: "No one
will deny that I am much given to criticism.
Along with exposition of my own views there
has always gone a pointing out of defects in
those of others. And if this is a trait in
my writing, still more is it a trait in my con-
versation. The tendency to fault-finding is
dominant — disagreeably dominant. The in-
dicating of errors in thought and speech
made by those aroimd has all through life been
an incurable habit — a habit for which I have
often reproached myself, but to no purpose."

The " Autobiography " abounds in illustra-
tions of the habit. For instance : —

"Of late I have observed simdry cases in
which, having foimd the right, people deliber-
ately desert it for the wrong. ... A genera-
tion ago salt-cellars were made of convenient
shapes — either ellipses or elongated paral-
lelograms: the advantage being that the salt-
spoon, placed lengthwise, remained in its place.

But for some time past, fashion has dictated

118

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

circular salt-cellars, on the edges of which the
salt-spoon will not remain without skilful
balancing: it falls on the cloth. In my boy-
hood a jug was made of a form at once conven-
ient and graceful. . . . Now, however, the
almost imiversal form of jug in use is a frustum
of a cone with a miniature spout. It combines
all possible defects. When anything like full,
it is impossible to pour out a small quantity
without part of the liquid trickling down be-
neath the spout; and a larger quantity cannot
be poured out without exceeding the limits of
the spout and running over on each side of it.
If the jug is half empty, the tilting must be
continued a long time before any liquid comes;
and then, when it does come, it comes with a
rush; because its surface has now become so
large that a small inclination delivers a great
deal. To all which add that the shape is as
ugly a one as can well be hit upon. Still more
extraordinary is the folly of a change made in
another utensil of daily use " — and Spencer
goes on to find fault with the cylindrical form
of candle extinguisher, proving by a description

119

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

of its shape that "it squashes the wick into
the melted composition, the result being that
when, next day, the extinguisher is taken oflf,
the wick, imbedded in the solidified composi-
tion, cannot be lighted without difficulty '*
(vol. ii, page 238)-

The remorseless explicitness, the pimctua-
tion, everything, make these specimens of
public fault-finding with what probably was
the equipment of Mr. Spencer's latest board-
ing-house, sound like passages from "The
Man versus the State." Another example: —

"Playing billiards became * my custom al-
ways of the afternoon.* Those who confess to
billiard-playing coramonly make some kind of
an excuse. . • . It suflSces to me that I like
billiards, and the attainment of the pleasure
given I regard as a suflScient motive. I have
for a long time deliberately set my face against
that asceticism which makes it an offence to
do a thing for the pleasure of doing it; and
have habitually contended that, so long as no
injury is inflicted on others, nor any ulterior

injury on self, and so long as the various duties

120

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

of life have been discharged, the pursuit of
pleasure for its own sake is perfectly legitimate
and requires no apology. The opposite view
is nothing else than a remote sequence of the
old devil worship of the barbarian, who sought
to please his god by inflicting pains upon him-
self, and beUeved his god would he angry if
he made himself happy " (vol. ii, page 263). |

The tone of pedantic rectitude in these pas-
sages is characteristic. Every smallest thing
is either right or wrong, and if wrong, can be
articulately proved so by 'reasoning. Life
grows too dry and literal, and loses all aerial
perspective at such a rate; and the effect is
the more displeasing when the matters in dis-
pute have a rich variety of aspects, and when
the aspect from which Mr. Spencer deduces
his conclusions is manifestly partial.

For instance, in his art-criticisms. Spencer
in his youth did much drawing, both mechani-
cal and artistic. Volume one contains a
photo-print of a very creditable bust which he
modelled of his imcle. He had a musical ear,

and practiced singing. He paid attention to

121

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

style, and was not wholly insensible to poetry.
Yet in all his dealings with the art-products of
mankind he manifests the same curious dry-
ness and mechanical literality of judgment,
— a dryness increased by pride in his non-
conformity. He would, for example, rather
give a large sum than read to the end of
Homer's Iliad, — the ceaseless repetition of
battles, speeches, and epithets like well-
greaved Greeks, horse-breaking Trojans; the
tedious enumeration of details of dresses, arms,
and chariots; such absurdities as giving the
genealogy of a horse while in the midst of a
battle; and the appeals to savage and brutal
passions, having soon made the poem intoler-
able to him (vol. i, page 300). Turner's paint-
ings he finds imtrue, in that the earth-region
is habitually as bright in tone as the air-region.
Moreover, Turner scatters his detail too
evenly. In Greek statues the hair is falsely
treated. Renaissance painting, even the best,
is spoiled by unreal illumination, and non-ren-
dering of reflected light in the shadows. Vene-
tian gothic sins by meaningless ornamentation.

122

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

St. Mark's Church may be precious archseo-
logically, but is not aesthetically precious. Of
Wagner's music he admires nothing but the
skilful specialization of the instruments in the
orchestra.

The fault-finding in all these cases rests
on observation, true as far as it goes; but
the total absence of genial relations with the
entirety of the phenomenon discussed, the
clutching at some paltry mechanical aspect
of it that lends itself to reasoned proof by a
plus 6, and the practical denial of everything
that only appeals to vaguer sentiment, show
a mind so oddly limited to ratiocinative and
explicit processes, and so wedded to the super-
ficial and flagrantly insufficient^ that one be-
gins to wonder whether in the philosophic and
scientific spheres the same mind can have
wrought out results of extraordinary value.

Both "yes " and "no " are here the answer.

Every one who writes books or articles knows

how he must floimder imtil he hits upon the

proper opening. Once the right beginning

foimd, everything follows easily and in due

123

MEMORIES AND STUPIES

order. If a man, however narrow, strikes
even by accident, into one of these fertile open-
ings, and pertinaciously follows the lead, he is
almost sure to meet truth on his path. Some
thoughts act almost like mechaiiical centres of
crystallization; facts cluster of themselves
about th«n. Such a thought was that of the
gradual growth of all things, by natural pro-
cesses, out of natural antecedents. Until the
middle of the nineteenth century no one had
grasped it wholesale; and the thinker who did
so earliest was boimd to make discoveries just
in proportion to the exclusiveness of his in-
terest in the principle. He who had the keen-
est eye for instances and illustrations, and was
least divertible by casual side-curiosity, would
score the quickest triumph.

To Spencer is certainly due the immense
credit of having been the first to see in evolu-
tion an absolutely imiversal principle. If any
one else had grasped its universality, it failed
at any rate to grasp him as it grasped Spencer.
For Spencer it instantly became "the guiding

conception running through and connecting

124

r SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

all the concrete sciences " (vol. ii, page 196).
Here at last was "an object at once large and
distinct enough " to overcome his "constitu-
tional idleness." "With an important and
definite end to achieve, I could work " (vol. i,
page 215). He became, in short, the victim of
a vivid obsession, and for the first time in his
life seems to have grown genuinely ambitious.
Every item of his experience, small or great,
every idea in his mental storehouse, had now
to be considered with reference to its bearing
on the new imiversal principle. On pages
194-199 of volume two he gives an interest-
ing summary of the way in which all his previ-
ous and subsequent ideas moved into harmo-
nious coordination and subordination, when
once he had this universal key to insight. Ap-
plying it wholesale as he did, innumerable
truths imobserved till then had to fall into
his gamebag. And his peculiar trick, a prig-
gish infirmity in daily intercourse, of treating
every smallest thing by abstract law, was here
a merit. Add his sleuth-hoimd scent for what

he was after, and his imtiring pertinacity, to

1«5

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

his priority in perceiving the one great truth,
and you fully justify the popular estimate of
him as one of the world's geniuses, in spite of
the fact that the "temperament "' of genius,
so called, seems to have been so lacking in him.

In one sense, then, Spencer's personal nar-
rowness and dryness were not hindering, but
helping conditions of his achievement. Grant
that a vast picture quelconque had to be made
before the details could be made perfect, and
a greater richness and receptivity of mind
would have resulted in hestitation. The
quality would have been better in spots, but
the extensiveness would have suflFered.

Spencer is thus the philosopher of vastness.
Misprised by many specialists, who carp at
his technical imperfections, he has neverthe-
less enlarged the imagination, and set free the
speculative mind of coimtless doctors, engi-
neers, and lawyers, of many physicists and
chemists, and of thoughtful laymen generally.
He is the philosopher whom those who have no
other philosopher can appreciate. To be
able to say this of any man is great praise.

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

and gives the "yes'* answer to my recent
question.

Can the "no '* answer be as unhesitatingly
uttered? I think so, if one makes the qual-
itative aspect of Spencer's work undo its
quantitative aspect. The luke-warm equable
temperament, the narrowness of sympathy and
passion, the fondness for mechanical forms of
thought, the imperfect receptivity and lack of
interest in facts as such, dissevered from their
possible connection with a theory; nay, the
very vividness itself, the keenness of scent
and the pertinacity; these all are qualities
which may easily make for second-rateness,
and for contentment with a cheap and loosely
woven achievement. As Mr. Spencer's "First
Principles " is the book which more than any
other has spread his popular reputation, I
had perhaps better explain what I mean by
criticising some of its peculiarities.

I read this book as a youth when it was still
appearing in numbers, and was carried away
with enthusiasm by the intellectual perspec-
tives which it seemed to open. When a

127

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

maturer companion, Mr. Charles S. Peirce,
attacked it in my presence, I felt spiritually
woimded, as by the defacement of a sacred
image or picture, though I could not verbally
defend it against his criticisms.

Later I have used it often as a text-book
with students, and the total outcome of my
dealings with it is an exceedingly unfavorable
verdict. Apart from the great truth which it
enforces, that everything has evolved some-
how, and apart from the inevitable stimulating
eflFect of any such universal picture, I regard
its teachings as almost a museum of blimdering
reasoning. Let me try to indicate briefly my
groimds for such an opinion.

I pass by the section on the Unknowable, be-
cause this part of Mr. Spencer's philosophy has
won fewer friends than any other. It consists
chiefly of a rehash of ManseFs rehash of Ham-
ilton's " Philosophy of the Conditioned," andhas
hardly raised its head since John Mill so eflPec-
tively demolished it. If criticism of our human
intellectual constitution is needed, it can be

got out of Bradley to-day better than out of

1£8

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Spencer. The latter's way of reconciling sci-
ence and religion is, moreover, too absurdly
rwCij. Find, he says, a fundamental abstract
truth on which they can agree, and that will
reconcile them. Such a truth, he thinks, is
that there is a mystery. The trouble is that
it is over just such common truths that quar-
rels begin. Did the fact that both believed
in the existence of the Pope reconcile Luther
and Ignatius Loyola? Did it reconcile the
South and the North that both agreed that
there were slaves? Religion claims thjat the
"mystery *' is interpretable by human reason;
"Science," speaking through Spencer, insists
that it is not. The admission of the mystery
is the very signal for the quarrel. Moreover,
for nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of
a thousand the sense of mystery is the sense of
more'tO'be-known, not the sense of a More,
not to be known.

But pass the Unknowable by, and turn to
Spencer's famous law of Evolution.

"Science'' works with several types of

"law." The most frequent and useful type

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

is that of the "elementary law," — that of
the composition of forces, that of gravitation,
of refraction, and the like. Such laws declare
no concrete facts to exist, and make no proph-
ecy as to any actual future. They limit them-
selves to saying that if a certain character be
foimd in any fact, another character will co-
exist with it or follow it. The usefulness of these
laws is proportionate to the extent to which the
characters they treat of pervade the world, and
to the accuracy with which they are definable.
Statistical laws form another type, and
positively declare something about the world
of actuality. Although they tell uS nothing
of the elements of things, either abstract or
concrete, they affirm that the resultant of their
actions drifts preponderantly in a particular
direction. Population tends toward cities;
the working classes tend to grow discontented;
the available energy of the universe is running
down — such laws prophesy the real future
en grosy but they never help us to predict any
particular detail of it.

Spencer's law of Evolution is of the statis-
ISO

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

tical variety. It defines what evolution
means, and what dissolution means, and as-
serts that, although both processes are always
going on together, there is in the present phase
of the world a drift in favor of evolution. In
the first edition of " First Principles "' an evolu-
tive change in anything was described as the
passage of it from a state of indefinite incohe-
rent homogeneity to a definite coherent heter-
ogeneity. The existence of a drift in this
direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves,
both by a survey of facts, and by deducing it
from certain laws of the elementary type,
which he severally names "the instability of
the homogeneous," "the multiplication of
effects," "segregation," and "equilibration."
The two former insure the heterogeneity, while
"segregation " brings about the definiteness
and coherence, and "equilibration " arrests
the process, and determines when dissolutive
changes shall begin.

The whole panorama is resplendent for
variety and inclusiveness, and has aroused an

admiration for philosophy in minds that never

ISl

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

admired philosophy before. Like Descartes
in earlier days, Spencer aims at a purely
mechanical explanation of Nature. The know-
able imiverse is nothing but matter and
motion, and its history is nothing but the
"redistribution "' of these entities. The value
of such an explanation for scientific purposes
depends altogether on how consistent and
exact it is. Every "thing '' must be inter-
preted as a "configuration,'' every "event''
as a change of configuration, every predicate
ascribed must be of a geometrical sort. Meas-
ured by these requirements of mechanics
Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His
terms are vagueness and ambiguity incar-
nate, and he seems incapable of keeping the
mechanical point of view in mind for five
pages consecutively.

"Definite," for example, is hardly a physi-
cal idea at all. Every motion and every ar-
rangement of matter is definitely what it is,
— a fog or an irregular scrawl, as much so as
a billiard ball or a straight line. Spencer

means by definiteness in a thing any character

132

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

that makes it arrest our attention, and forces
us to distinguish it from other things. The
word with him has a human, not a physical
connotation. Definite things, in his book,
finally appear merely as things that men have
made separate names f or ^ so that there is hardly
a pretence of the mechanical view being kept.
Of course names increase as human history
proceeds, so "definiteness " in things must
necessarily more and more evolve.

"Coherent," again. This has the definite
mechanical meaning of resisting separation, of
sticking together; but Spencer plays fast and
loose with this meaning. Coherence with him
sometimes means permanence in time^ some-
times such mutual dependence of parts as is
realized in a widely scattered system of no
fixed material configuration; a conunercial
house, for example, with its "travellers" and
ships and cars.

An honestly mechanical reader soon rubs
his eyes with bewilderment at the orgy of am-
biguity to which he is introduced. Every

term in Spencer's fireworks shinmiers through

1S3

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

a whole spectrum of meanings in order to
adapt itself to the successive spheres of evolu-
tion to which it must apply. "Integration/"
for instance. A definite coherence is an Inte-
gration; and examples given of integration
are the contraction of the solar nebula, the
formation of the earth's crust, the calcifica-
tion of cartilage, the shortening of the body of
crabs, the loss of his tail by man, the mutual
dependence of plants and animals, the growth
of powerful states, the tendency of human
occupations to go to distinct localities, the
dropping of terminal inflexions in English
grammar, the formation of general concepts
by the mind, the use of machinery instead of
simple tools, the development of "composi-
tion '' in the fine arts, etc., etc. It is obvious
that no one form of the motion of matter char-
acterizes all these facts. The human ones
simply embody the more and more successful
pursuit of certain ends.

In the second edition of his book, Mr. Spen-
cer supplemented his first formula by a imi-

fying addition, meant to be strictly mechanical.

134

SPENCER*S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

"Evolution," he now said, "is the progres-
sive integration of matter and dissipation of
motion," during which both the matter and
the motion imdergo the previously designated
kinds of change. But this makes the formula
worse instead of better. The "dissipation of
motion " part of it is simple vagueness, —
for what particular motion is "dissipated"
when a man or state grows more highly
evolved? And the integration of matter be-
longs only to stellar and geologic evolution.
Neither heightened specific gravity, nor
greater massiveness, which are the only con-
ceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of
the more evolved vital, mental, or social
things.

It is obvious that the facts of which Spencer
here gives so clumsy an account could all have
been set down more simply. First there is
solar, and then there is geological evolution,
processes accurately describable as integra-
tions in the mechanical sense, namely, as de-
crease in bulk, or growth in hardness. Then

Life appears; and after that neither integra-

1S5

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

tion of matter nor dissipation of motion plays
any part whatever. The result of life, how-
ever, is to fill the world more and more with
things displaying organic unity. By this is
meant any arrangement of which one part
helps to ke^p the other parts in existence.
Some organic imities are material, — a sea-
urchin, for example, a department store, a
civil service, or an ecclesiastical organization.
Some are mental, as a "science,'' a code of
laws, or an educational programme. But
whether they be material or mental products,
organic imities must accumulate; for every
old one tends to conserve itself, and if success-
ful new ones arise they also "come to stay."
The human use of Spencer's adjectives "in-
tegrated," "definite," "coherent," here no
longer shocks one. We are frankly on teleo-
logical ground, and metaphor and vagueness
are permissible.

This tendency of organic imities to accumu-
late when once they are formed is absolutely
all the truth I can distill from Spencer's un-
wieldy accoimt of evolution. It makes a much

136

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

less gaudy and chromatic picture, but what
there is of it is exact.

Countless other criticisms swarm toward
my pen, but I have no heart to express them,
— it is too sorry an occupation. A word about
Spencer's conception of "Force,'' however,
insists on being added; for although it is one
of his most essential, it is one of his vaguest
ideas.

Over all his special laws of evolution there
reigns an absolutely general law, that of the
"persistence of force." By this Spencer some-
times means the phenomenal law of conserva-
tion of energy, sometimes the metaphysical
principle that the quantity of existence is un-
alterable, sometimes the logical principle that
nothing can happen without a reason, some-
times the practical postulate that in the ab-
sence of any assignable diflFerence you must
call a thing the same. This law is one vast
vagueness, of which I can give no clear ac-
count; but f)f his special vaguenesses "mental
force" and "social force" are good examples.

These manifestations of the universal force, he

18T

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

says, are due to vital force, and this latter is
due to physical force, both being proportion-
ate to the amount of physical force which is
"transformed"' into them. But what on
earth is "social force"? Sometimes he iden-
tifies it with "social activity'' (showing the
latter to be proportionate to the amount of
food eaten), sometimes with the work done by
human beings and their steam-engines, and
shows it to be due ultimately to the sun's
heat. It would never occur to a reader of his
pages that a social force proper might be any-
thing that acted as a stimulus of social change,
— a leader, for example, a discovery, a book,
a new idea, or a national insult; and that the
greatest of "forces" of this kind need embody
no more "physical force" than the smallest.
The measure of greatness here is the eflFect pro-
duced on the environment, not a quantity
antecedently absorbed from physical nature.
Mr. Spencer himself is a great social force;
but he ate no more than an average man, and
his body, if cremated, would disengage no

more energy. The effects he exerts are of the

1S8

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

nature of releases ^ — his words pull triggers in
certain kinds of brain«

The fundamental distinction in mechanics
between forces of push-and-pull and forces of
release is one of which Mr. Spencer, in his
earlier years, made no use whatever. Only in
his sixth edition did he show that it had seri-
ously arrested his attention. In biology, psy-
chology, and sociology the forces concerned
are almost exclusively forces of release. Spen-
cer's accoimt of social forces is neither good so-
ciology nor good mechanics. His feeble grasp
of the conception of force vitiates, in fact, all
his work.

But the task of a carper is repugnant. The
"Essays," "Biology," "Psychology," "Sociol-
ogy," and "Ethics" are all better than "First
Principles," and contain numerous and ad-
mirable bits of penetrating work of detail.
My impression is that, of the systematic treat-
ises, the "Psychology" will rank as the most
original. Spencer broke new groimd here in
insisting that, since mind and its environment
have evolved together, they must be studied

1S9

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

together. He gave to the study of mind in
isolation a definitive quietus, and that cer-
tainly is a great thing to have achieved. To
be sure he overdid the matter, as usual, and
left no room for any mental structure at all,
except that which passively resulted from the
storage of impressions received from the
outer world in the order of their frequency by
fathers and transmitted to their sons. The
belief that whatever is acquired by sires is
inherited by sons, and the ignoring of purely
inner variations, are weak points; but to have
brought in the environment as vital was a
master stroke.

I may say that Spencer's controversy over
use-inheritance with Weismann, entered into
after he was sixty, seems to me in point of
quality better than any other part of his work.
It is genuine labor over a puzzle, genuine
research.

Spencer's " Ethics '' is a most vital and
original piece of attitude-taking in the world
of ideals. His politico-ethical activity in gen-
eral breathes the purest English spirit of

140

SPENCER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

liberty, and his attacks on over-administra-
tion and criticisms on the inferiority of great
centralized systems are worthy to be the text-
books of individualists the worid over. I con-
fess that it is with this part of his work, in
spite of its hardness and inflexibility of tone,
that I personally sympathize most.

Looking back on Mr. Spencer as a whole, as
this admirably truth-telling "Autobiography "
reveals him, he is a figure unique for quaint con-
sistency. He never varied from that inimitable
blend of small and vast mindedness, of liber-
ality and crabbedness, which was his personal
note, and which defies our formulating power.
K an abstract logical concept could come to
life, its life would be like Spencer's, — the
same definiteness of exclusion and inclusion,
the same bloodlessness of temperament, the
same narrowness of intent and vastness of
extent, the same power of applying itself to
numberless instances. But he was no abstract
idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to
truth and justice as he saw them, who had deep

insights, and who finished, imder terrible frus-

141

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

trations f rom bad health, a piece of work that,
taken for all in all, is extraordinary. A human
life is greater than all its possible appraisers,
assessors, and critics. In comparison with the
fact of Spencer's actual living, such critical
characterization of it as I have been at all
these pains to produce seems a rather un-
important as well as a decidedly graceless
thing.

14£

FREDERIC MYERS'
SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY

VII

FREDERIC MYERS'
SERVICES TO PSYCHOLOGY*

On this memorial occasion it is from English
hearts and tongues belonging, as I never had
the privilege of belonging, to the immediate
environment of our lamented President, that
discourse of him as a man and as a friend
must come. It is for those who participated
in the endless drudgery of his labors for our
Society to tell of the high powers he showed
there; and it is for those who have something
of his burning interest in the problem of our
human destiny to estimate his success in
throwing a little more light into its dark
recesses. To me it has been deemed best to
assign a colder task. Frederic Myers was a
psychologist who worked upon lines hardly

^ Written for a meeting of the Society for Psychical
Research held after the death of Frederic Myers and
first published in the Society's Proceedings^ Part XLU,
page 17 (1001).

145

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

admitted by the more academic branch of
the profession to be legitimate; and as for
some years I bore the title of "Professor of
Psychology/' the suggestion has been made
(and by me gladly welcomed) that I should
spend my portion of this hour in defining the
exact place and rank which we must accord
to him as a cultivator and promoter of the
science of the Mind.

Brought up entirely upon literature and
history, and interested at first in poetry and
religion chiefly; never by nature a philoso-
pher in the technical sense of a man forced
to pursue consistency among concepts for
the mere love of the logical occupation; not
crammed with science at college, or trained to
scientific method by any passage through a
laboratory, Myers had as it were to re-
create his personality before he became the
wary critic of evidence, the skilful handler
of hypothesis, the learned neurologist and
omnivorous reader of biological and cosmolo-
gical matter, with whom in later years we

were acquainted. The transformation came

146

FREDERIC MYERS

about because he needed to be ^11 these things
in order to work successfully at the problem
that lay near his heart; and the ardor of
his will and the richness of his intellect are
proved by the success with which he under-
went so unusual a transformation.

The problem, as you know, was that of
seeking evidence for human immortality.-^
His contributions to psychology were inci-
dental to that research, and would probably
never have been made had he not entered
on it. But they have a value for Science
entirely independent of the light they shed
upon that problem; and it is quite apart
from it that I shall venture to consider them.

If we look at the history of mental science
we are immediately struck by diverse ten-
dencies among its several cultivators, the

•
consequence being a certain opposition of

schools and some repugnance among their
disciples. Apart from the great contrasts
between minds that are teleological or bio-
logical and minds that are mechanical, be-

147

MEMORIES AND'STUDIES

tween the aiiiinists and the associationists
in psychology, there is the entirely different
contrast between what I will call the classic-
academic and the romantic type of imagina-
tion. The former has a fondness for clean
pure lines and noble simplicity in its construc-
tions. It explains things by as few principles
as possible and is intolerant of either nonde-
script facts or clumsy formulas. The facts
must lie in a neat assemblage, and the psy-
chologist must be enabled to cover them and
"tuck them in" as safely under his system
as a mother tucks her babe in under the down
coverlet on a winter night. Until quite
recently all psychology, whether animistic
or associationistic, was written on classic-
academic lines. The consequence was that
the human mind, as it is figured in this liter-
ature, was largely an abstraction. Its normal
adult traits were recognized. A sort of sun-
lit terrace was exhibited on which it took its
exercise. But where that terrace stopped,
the mind stopped; and there was nothing

farther left to tell of in this kind of philos-

148

FREDERIC MYERS

ophy but the brain and the other physical
facts of nature on the one hand, and the ab-
solute metaphysical ground of the imiverse
on the other.

But of late years the terrace has been over-
run by romantic improvers, and to pass to
their work is like going from classic to gothic
architecture, where few outlines are pure
and where uncouth forms lurk in the shadows.
A mass of mental phenomena are now seen
in the shrubbery beyond the parapet. Fan-
tastic, ignoble, hardly human, or frankly
non-human are some of these new candidates
for psychological description. The mena-
gerie and the madhouse, the nursery, the
prison, and the hospital, have been made to
deliver up their material. The world of mind
is shown as something infinitely more compleXT^
than was suspected; and whatever beauties
it may still possess, it has lost at any rate the
beauty of academic neatness.

But despite the triumph of romanticism,
psychologists as a rule have still some lin-
gering prejudice in favor of the nobler sim-

149

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

plicities. Moreover, there are social prejudices
which scientific men themselves obey. The
word "hypnotism" has been trailed about in
the newspapers so that even we ourselves
rather wince at it, and avoid occasions of its
use. "Mesmerism," "clairvoyance," "med-
ium," — horrescimus referentesi — and with
all these things, infected by their previous
mystery-mongering discoverers, even our best
friends had rather avoid complicity. For
instance, I invite eight of my scientific col-
leagues severally to come to my house at
their own time, and sit with a medium for
whom the evidence already published in our
"Proceedings" had been most noteworthy.
Although it means at worst the waste of the
hour for each, five of them decline the adven-
ture. I then beg the " Commission " connected
with the chair of a certain learned psychologist
in a neighboring university to examine the
same medium, whom Mr. Hodgson and I
offer at our own expense to send and leave
with them. They also have to be excused

from any such entanglement. I advise an-

150

FREDERIC MYERS

other psychological friend to look into this
medium's case, but he replies that it is useless;
for if he should get such results as I report,
he would (being suggestible) simply bdieve
himself hallucinated. When I propose as a
remedy that he should remain in the back-
ground and take notes, whilst his wife has the
sitting, he explains that he can never consent
to his wife's presence at such performances.
This friend of mine writes ex cathedra on the
subject of psychical research, declaring (I
need hardly add) that there is nothing in it;
the chair of the psychologist with the Com-
mission was founded by a spiritist, partly
with a view to investigate mediums; and one
of the five colleagues who declined my invi-
tation is widely quoted as an effective critic
of our evidence. So rims the world away!
I should not indulge in the personality and
triviaUty of such anecdotes, were it not that
they paint the temper of our time, a temper
which, thanks to Frederic Myers more than
to any one, will certainly be impossible after

this generation. Myers was, I think, decidedly

151

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

exclusive and intolerant by nature. But his
keenness for truth carried him into regions
where either intellectual or social squeam-
ishness would have been fatal, so he "morti-
fied" his amour propre, imclubbed himself
completely, and became a model of patience,
tact and humility wherever investigation
required it. Both his example and his body
of doctrine will make this temper the only
one henceforward scientifically respectable.

If you ask me how his doctrine has this
effect, I answer: By co-ordinating! For Myers'
great principle of "research was that in order to
understand any one species of fact we ought
to have all the species of the same general
class of fact before us. So he took a lot of
scattered phenomena, some of them recog-
nized as reputable, others outlawed from
science, or treated as isolated curiosities; he
made series of them, filled in the transitions
by delicate hypotheses or analogies; and
boimd them together in a system by his bold
inclusive conception of the Subliminal Self,

so that no one can now touch one part of the

152

FREDERIC MYERS

fabric without finding the rest entangled with
it. Such vague terms of apperception as
psychologists have hitherto been satisfied
with using for most of these phenomena, as
"fraud," "rot," "rubbish," will no more be
possible hereafter than "dirt" is possible
as a head of classification in chemistry, or
"vermin" in zoology. Whatever they are,
they are things with a right to definite des-
cription and to careful observation.

I cannot but account this as a great service
rendered to Psychology. I expect that Myers
will ere long distinctly figure in mental
science as the radical leader in what I haveH*
called the romantic movement. Through
him for the first time, psychologists are in
possession of their full material, and mental
phenomena are set down in an adequate
inventory. To bring unlike things thus to-
gether by forming series of which the inter-
mediary terms connect the extremes, is a
procedure much in use by scientific men. It
is a first step made towards securing their

interest in the romantic facts, that Myers

153

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

should have shown how easily this familiar
method can be applied to their study.

Myers' conception of the extensiveness of
the Subliminal Self quite overturns the classic
notion of what the human mind consists in.
The supraliminal region, as Myers calls it,
the classic-academic consciousness, which was
once alone considered either by associationists
or animists, figures in his theory as only a
small segment of the psychic spectrum. It is
a special phase of mentality, teleologically
evolved for adaptation to our natural en-
vironment, and forms only what he calls a
"privileged case" of personality. The out-
lying Subliminal, according to him, represents
more fully our central and abiding being.

I think the words subliminal and supra-
liminal unfortimate, but they were probably
unavoidable. I think, too, that Myers'
belief in the ubiquity and great extent of
the Subliminal will demand a far larger num-
ber of facts than sufficed to persuade him,
before the next generation of psychologists

shall become persuaded. He regards the

154

FREDERIC MYERS

Subliminal as the enveloping mother-con- . .
sciousness in each of us, from which the con-
sciousness we wot of is precipitated like a
crystal. But whether this view get confirmed
or get overthrown by future inquiry, the
definite way in which Myers has thrown it
down is a new and specific challenge to inquiry.
For half a century now, psychologists have ""
fully admitted the existence of a subliminal
mental region, under the name either of im-
conscious cerebration or of the involuntary,
life; but they have never definitely taken up
the question of the extent of this region,
never sought explicitly to map it out. Myers
definitely attacks this problem, which, after
him, it will be impossible to ignore.

Wlfwi is the precise constitution of the
SMbliminal — such is the problem which de-
serves to figure in our Science hereafter as the
problem of Myers; and willy-nilly, inquiry
must follow on the path which it has opened
up. But Myers has not only propounded the ^
problem definitely, he has also invented defi-
nite methods for its solution. Posthypnotic

155

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

j suggestion, crystal-gazing, automatic writing
land trance-speech, the willing-game, etc., are
/now, thanks to him, instruments of research,
I reagents like litmus paper or the galvanometer,
for revealing what would otherwise he hidden.
These are so many ways of putting the Sub-
liminal on tap. Df course without the simul-
taneous work on hypnotism and hysteria
independently begun by others, he could not
have pushed his own work so far. But he is
so far the only generalizer of the problem and
the only user of all the methods; and even
though his theory of the extent of the Sub-
liminal should have to be subverted in the
end, its formulation will, I am sure, figure
always as a rather momentous event in the
history of our Science.

Any psychologist who should wish to read
Myers out of the profession — and there are
probably still some who would be glad to do
so to-day — is committed to a definite alter-
native. Either he must say that we knew all
about the subliminal region before Myers

took it up, or he must say that it is certain

156

FREDERIC MYERS

that states of super-normal cognition form
no part of its content. The first contention
would be too absurd. The second one remains
more plausible. There are many first hand
investigators into the Subliminal who, not
having themselves met with anything super-
normal, would probably not hesitate to call
all the reports of it erroneous, and who would
li mit the Subliminal to dissolutive pheno mena t
of consciousne s s exclusively, to lapsed m emo-
ries, subcon scious sensations, impulses^ and
ph obiasy and the like. Messrs. Janet and
Binet, for aught I know, may hold some such ^
position as this. Against it Myers' thesis
would stand sharply out. Of the Subliminal,
he would say, we can give no ultra-simple ac-
count: there are discreet regions in it, levels
separated by critical points of transition,
and no one formula holds true of them all.
And any conscientious psychologist ought,
it seems to me, to see that, since these
multiple modifications of personality are only
beginning to be reported and observed with

care, it is obvious that a dogmatically nega-
157

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

live treatment of them must be premature,
and that the problem of Myers still awaits
us as the problem of far the deepest moment
for our actual psychology, whether his own
tentative solutions of certain parts of it be
correct or not.

Meanwhile, descending to detail, one can-
not help admiring the great originality with
which Myers wove such an extraordinarily
detached and discontinuous series of phe-
nomena together. Unconscious cerebration,
dreams, hypnotism, hysteria, inspirations of
genius, the willing-game, planchette, crystal-
gazing, hallucinatory voices, apparitions of
the dying, medium-trances, demoniacal pos-
session, clairvoyance, thought-transference,
even ghosts and other facts more doubtful;
these things form a chaos at first sight most
discouraging. No wonder that scientists can
think of no other principle of unity among
them than their common appeal to men's
perverse propensity to superstition. Yet
Myers has actually made a system of them,

stringing them continuously upon a perfectly
158

FREDERIC MYERS

legitimate objective hypothesis, verified in
some eases and extended to others by analogy.
Taking the name "automatism" from the
phenomenon of automatic writing — I am not
sure that he may not himself have been the
first so to baptize this latter phenomenon —
he made one great simplification at a stroke
by treating hallucinations and active impulses
under a common head, as se nsory and mot or
avio matis ms. Automatism he then conceived
broadly as a message of any kind from the
Subliminal to the Supraliminal. And he
went a step farther in his hypothetic inter-
pretation, when he insisted on "symbolism " ^^
as^ one of the ways in which one stratum o f y^
our personality will often interpret the infl u-
ences of anoth er. Obsessive thoughts and
delusions, as well as voices, visions, and
impulses, thus fall subject to one mode of
treatment. To explain them, we must ex-
plore the Subliminal; to cure them we must
practically influence it.
Myers' work on automatism led to his

brilliant conception, in 1891, of hyste ria. He

159

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

defined it, with good reasons given, as "a
disease of the hypnotic stratum/' Hardly
had he done so when the wonderfully ingenious
observations of Binet, and especially of Janet
in France, gave to this view the completest
of corroborations. These observations have
been extended in Germany, America, and
elsewhere; and although BJnet and Janet
worked independently of Myers, and did
work far more objective, he nevertheless will
stand as the original announcer of a theory
which, in my opinion, makes an epoch, not
only in medical but in psychological science,
because it brings in an entirely new concep-
tion of our mental possibilities. /
Myers' manner of apprehending the pro-
blem of the Subliminal shows itself fruitful
in every possible direction. While official
science practically refuses to attend to Sub-
liminal phenomena, the circles which do
attend to them treat them with a respect
altogether too undiscriminating, — every Sub-
liminal deliverance must be an oracle. The

result is that there is no basis of intercourse

160

FREDERIC MYERS

between those who best know the facts and
those who are most competent to discuss
them. Myers inunediately establishes a basis
by his remark that in so far as they have to
use the same organism, with its preformed
avenues of expression — what may be very
different strata of the Subliminal are con-
demned in advance to manifest themselves
in similar ways. This might account for the
great generic likeness of so many automatic
performances, while their diflFerent starting-
points behind the threshold might account
for certain diflferences in them. Some of them,
namely, seem to include elements of super-
normal knowledge; others to show a curious
subconscious mania for personation and de-
ception; others again to be mere drivel. But
Myers' conception of various strata or levels
in the Subliminal sets us to analyzing them
all from a new point of view. The word
Subliminal for him denotes only a regio n,
with possibly the most heterogeneous con-
tents. Much of the content is certainly rub-
bish, matter that Myers calls dissolutive,

161

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

stuff that dreams are made of, fragments of
lapsed memory, mechanical effects of habit
and ordinary suggestion; some belongs to a
middle region where a strange manufacture of
inner romances perpetually goes on; finally,
some of the content appears superiorly and
subtly perceptive. But each has to appeal
to us by the same channels and to use organs
partly trained to their performance by mes-
sages from the other levels. Under these con-
ditions what could be more natural to expect
than a confusion which Myers' suggestion
would- then have been the first indispensable
step towards finally clearing away.

Once more, then, whatever be the upshot
of the patient work required here, Myers'
resourceful intellect has certainly done a
service to psychology.

I said a while ago that his intellect was not
by nature philosophic in the narrower sense
of being that of a logician. In the broader
sense of being a man of wide scientific imag-
ination, Myers was most eminently a philos-
opher. He has shown this by his unusually

162

FREDERIC MYERS

daring grasp of the princ^le of evolution, and
by the wonderful way in which he has worked
out suggestions of mental evolution by means
of biological analogies. These analogies are,
if anything, too profuse and dazzling in his
pages; but his conception of mental evolution
is more radical than anything yet considered
by psychologists as possible. It is absolutely
original; and, being so radical, it becomes
one of those hypotheses which, once pro-
pounded, can never be forgotten, but sooner
or later have to be worked out and submitted
in every way to criticism and verification.

The comer-stone of his conception is the
fact that consciousness has no essential unit y.
It aggregates and dissipates, and what we
call normal consciousness, — the "Human
Mind" of classic psychology, — is not even
typical, but only one case out of thousands.
Slight organic alterations, intoxications, and
auto-intoxications, give supraliminal forms
completely different, and the subliminal re-
gion seems to have laws in many respects pecu-
liar. Myers thereupon makes the suggestion

168

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

that the whole system of consciousness studied
by the classic psychology is only an extract
from a larger total, being a part told-oflf, as it
were, to do service in the adjustments of our
physical organism to the world of nature.
This extract, aggregated and personified for
this particular piupose, has, like all evolving,
things, a variety of peculiarities. Having
evolved, it may also dissolve, and in dreams,
hysteria, and divers forms of degeneration it
seems to do so. This is a retrograde process
of separation in a consciousness of which the
unity was once effected. But again the con-
sciousness may follow the opposite course
and integrate still farther, or evolve by grow-
ing into yet untried directions. In veridical
automatisms it actually seems to do so. It
drops some of its usual modes of increase, its
ordinary use of the senses, for example, and
lays hold of bits of information which, in
ways that we cannot even follow conjectu-
rally, leak into it by way of the Subliminal.
The ulterior source of a certain part of

this information (limited and perverted as it

164

FREDERIC MYERS

always is by the organism's idiosyncrasies
in the way of transmission and expression)
Myers thought he could reasonably trace
to departed human intelligence, or its exist-
ing equivalent. I pretend to no opinion on
this point, for I have as yet studied the evi-
dence with so little critical care that Myers
was always surprised at my negligence. I
can therefore speak with detachment from
this question and, as a mere empirical psy-
chologist, of Myers' general evolutionary
conception. As such a psychologist I feel
sure that the latter is a hypothesis of first-
rate philosophic importance. It is based, of
course, on his convicton of the extent of the
Subliminal, and will stand or fall as that is
verified or not; but whether it stand or fall,
it looks to me like one of those swee ping idea s
by which the scientific researches of an entire
generation are often moulded. It would not
be surprising if it proved such a leading idea
in the investigation of the near future; for
in one shape or another, the Subliminal has

come to stay with us, and the only possible

165

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

course to take henceforth is radically and
thoroughly to explore its significance.

' Looking back from Frederic Myers' vision
of vastness in the field of psychological re-
search upon the prc^amme as mQst academic
psychologists frame it, one must confess that
its limitation at their hands seems not only
unplausible, but in truth, a little ridiculous.
Even with brutes and madmen, even with
hysterics and hypnotics admitted as the
academic psychologists admit them, the offi-
cial outlines of the subject are far too neat to
stand in the light of analogy with the rest of
Nature. The ultimates of Nature, — her
simple elements, if there be such, — may
indeed combine in definite proportions and
follow classic laws of architecture; but in
her proximates, in her phenomena as we
immediately experience them. Nature is every-
where gothic, not classic. She forms a real
jungle, where all things are provisional, half-
fitted to each other, and untidy. When we

add such a complex kind of subliminal region

166

FBEDERIC^ MYBaRS

as Myers believed in to the official region, we
restore the analogy; and, though we may be
mistaken in much detail, in a general way, at
least, we become plausible. In comparison
with Myers' way of attacking the question j
of immortality in particular, the official way
is certainly so far from the mark as to be
almost preposterous. It assumes that when
our ordinary consciousness goes out, the only
alternative smrv^iving kind of consciousness
that could be possible is abstr act mentali ty,
living on spiritual truth, and communicating
ideal wisdom — in short, the whole classic
platonizing Sunday-school conception. Fail-
ing to get that sort of thing when it listens
to reports about mediums, it denies that there
can be anything. Myers approaches the
subject with no such a priori requirement. If
he finds any positive indication of " spirits, '*
he records it, whatever it may be, and is
willing to fit his conception to the facts, how-
ever grotesque the latter may appear, rather
than to blot out the facts to suit his concep-
tion. But, as was long ago said by our collab-

167

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

orator, Mr. Canning Schiller, in words more
eflfective than any I can write, if any concep-
tion should be blotted out by serious lovers
of Nature, it surely ought to be classic aca-
demic Sunday-school conception. If anything
is unlikely in a world like this, it is that the
next adjacent thing to the mere surface-
show of our experience should be the realm
of eternal essences, of platonic ideas, of crystal
battlements, of absolute significance. But
whether they be animists or associationists,
a supposition something like this is still the
assumption of our usual psychologists. It
comes from their being for the most part
philosophers, in the technical sense, and from
their showing the weakness of that profes-
sion for logical abstractions. Myers was pri-
marily a lover of life and not of abstractions.
He loved human life, human persons, and their
peculiarities. So he could easily admit the
possibility of level beyond level of perfectly
concrete experience, all "queer and cactus;
like" though it might be, btefore we touch

the absolute, or reach the eternal essences.

168

FREDERIC MYERS

Behind the minute anatomists and the
physiologists, with their metallic instruments,
there have always stood the out-door natu-
ralists with their eyes and love of concrete
nature. The former call the latter superficial,
but there is something wrong about your
laboratory-biologist who has no sympathy
witb living animals. In psychology there is a
simila^ distinction. Some psychologists are
fdscinlted by the varieties of mind in living
action, others by the dissecting out, whether
by logical analysis or by brass instruments,
of whatever elementary mental processes may
be there. Myers must decidedly be placed
in the former class, though his powerful use
of analogy enabled him also to do work after
the fashion of the latter. He loved human
nature as Cuvier and Agassiz loved animal
nature; in his view, as in their view, the sub-
ject formed a vast living picture. Whether
his name will have in psychology as honorable
a place as their names have gained in the
sister science, will depend on whether future

inquirers shall adopt or reject his theories;

169

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and the rapidity with which their decision
shapes itself will depend largely on the vigor
with which this Society continues its labor
in his absence. It is at any rate a possibility,
and I am disposed to think it a probability,
that Frederic Myers will always be remem-,
bered in psychology as the pioneer who staked
out a vast tract of mentaLjnldemess and
planted the flag of genuine science upon it.
He was an enormous collector. He introduced
for the first time comparison, classification,
and s erial or der in to the pecu liar kidfl of fact
which he collecte d. He was a gemus at per-
ceiving analogies; he was fertile in hypothe-
ses; and as far as conditions allowed it in
this meteoric region, he relied on verification.
Such advantages are of no avail, however,
if one has struck into a false road from the
outset. But should it turn out that Frederic
Myers has really hit the right road by his divin-
ing instinct, it is certain that, like the names of
others who have been wise, his name will keep
an honorable place in scientific history.

170

vra

PINAL IMPRESSIONS OP A
[PSYCHICAL BESEABCHEB

n^-^> f]fi^

\.{

PINAL IMPRESSIONS OP A
PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER!

The late Professor Henry Sidgwick was
celebrated for the rare mixture of ardor and
critical judgment which his character exhib-
ited. The liberal heart which he possessed
had to work with an intellect which acted
destructively on almost every particular ob-
ject of belief that was oflFered to its acceptance.
A quarter of a century ago, scandalized by the
chaotic state of opinion regarding the phe-
nomena now called by the rather ridiculous
name of "psychic" — phenomena, of which
the supply reported seems inexhaustible, but
which scientifically trained minds mostly re-

* Published under the title "Confidences of a
Psychical Researcher" in the American Magazine,
October, 1909. For a more complete and less popular
statement of some theories suggested in this article see
the last pages of a " Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-
Control " in Proceedings of the [Eng.] Society for Psych-
ical Research, 1909, 470; also printed in Proc. of Am.
Soc. for Psychical Research for the same year.

173

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

fuse to look at — he established, along with
Professor Barrett, Frederic Myers and Ed-
mund Gumey, the Society for Psychical Re-
search. These men hoped that if the material
were treated rigorously, and, as far as possible,
experimentally, objective truth would be elic-
ited, and the subject rescued from sentimental-
ism on the one side and dogmatizing ignorance
on the other. Like all founders, Sidgwick
hoped for a certain promptitude of result;
and I heard him say, the year before his
death, that if anyone had told him at the out-
set that after twenty years he would be in the
same identical state of doubt and balance that
he started with, he would have deemed the
prophecy incredible. It appeared impossible
that that amount of handling evidence should
bring so little finality of decision.

My own experience has been similar to
Sidgwick's. For twenty-five years I have
been in touch with the literature of psychical
research, and have had acquaintance with
nimierous "researchers." I have also spent a

good many hours (though far fewer than I

174

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

ought to have spent) in witnessing (or trying
to witness) phenomena. Yet I am theoreti-
cally no " further " than I was at the beginning;
and I confess that at times I have been tempted
to believe that the Creator has eternally in-
tended this department of nature to remain
baffling^ to prompt our curiosities and hopes
and suspicions all in equal measure, so that,
although ghosts and clairvoyances, and raps
and messages from spirits, are always seeming
to exist and can never be fully explained away,
they also can never be susceptible of full
corroboration.

vjhe peculiarity of the case is just that there
are so many sources of possible deception in
most of the observations that the whole lot of
them may be worthless, and yet that in com-
paratively few cases can aught more fatal than
this vague general possibility of error be
pleaded against the record. Science mean-
while needs something more than bare possi-
bilities to build upon; so your genuinely
scientific inquirer — I don't mean your ig-
noramus "scientist" — has to remain unsatis-

175

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

fied. It is hard to believe, however, that the
Creator has really put any big array of phe-
nomena into the world merely to defy and mock
our scientific tendencies; so my deeper belief is
that we psychical researchers have been too pre-
cipitate with our hopes, and that we must expect
to mark progress not by quarter-centuries, but
by half -centuries or whole centuries.

I am strengthened in this belief by my im-
pression that just at this moment a faint but
distinct step forward is being taken by compe-
tent opinion in these matters. "Physical
phenomena" (movements of matter without
contact, lights, hands and faces "material-
ized," etc.) have been one of the most baffling
regions of the general field (or perhaps one of
the least baffling prima fade^ so certain and
great has been the part played by fraud in their
production); yet even here the balance of
testimony seems slowly to be inclining towards
admitting the supernaturalist view. Eusapia
Paladino, the Neapolitan medium, has been
imder observation for twenty years or more.

Schiaparelli, the astronomer, and Lombroso
' 176 '

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

were the first scientific men to be converted by
her performances. Since then innmnerable
men of scientific standing have seen her, in-
cluding many "psychic " experts. Every one
agrees that she cheats in the most barefaced
manner whenever she gets an opportunity.
The Cambridge experts, with the Sidgwicks
and Richard Hodgson at their head, rejected
her in toto on that account. Yet her credit
has steadily risen, and now her last converts
are the eminent psychiatrist, Morselli, the
eminent physiologist, Botazzi, and our own
psychical researcher, Carrington, whose book
on "The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism'*
{against them rather!) makes his conquest
strategically important. If Mr. Podmore,
hitherto the prosecuting attorney of the S. P.
R., so far as physical phenomena are concerned
becomes converted also, we may indeed sit up
and look around us. Getting a good health
bill from "Science," Eusapia will then throw
retrospective credit on Home and Stainton
Moses, Florence Cook (Prof. Crookes' me-
dium), and all smilar wonder-workers. The

177

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

balance of presumptions will be changed in
favor of genuineness being possible at least,
in all reports of this particularly crass and low
type of supernatural phenomena.

Not long after Darwin's "Origin of Species'*
appeared I was studying with that excellent
anatomist and man, Jeflfries Wyman, at Har-
vard. He was a convert, yet so far a half-
hesitating one, to Darwin's views; but I
heard him make a remark that applies well to
the subject I now write about. <^jSVhen, he
said, a theory gets propounded over and over
again, coming up afresh after each time ortho-
dox criticism has buried it, and each time seem-
ing solider and harder to abolish, you may be
sure that there is truth in it. Oken and La-
marck and Chambers had been triumphantly
despatched and buried, but here was Darwin
making the very same heresy seem only more
plausible. How often has "Science" killed
oflf all spook philosophy, and laid ghosts and
raps and "telepathy" away underground as

so much popular delusion. Yet never before

178

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

were these things oflFered us so voluminously,
and never in such authentic-seeming shape or
with such good credentials. The tide seems
steadily to be rising, in spite of all the expedi-
ents of scientific orthodoxy. It is hard not to
suspect that here may be something diflFerent
from a mere chapter in human gullibility. It
may be a genuine realm of natural phenomena.
^FalsiLS in unOyfalsiLS in omnihuSy once a cheat,
always a cheat, such has been the motto of the
English psychical researchers in dealing with
mediimas. I am disposed to think that, as a
matter of policy, it has been wise. Tactically, it
is far better to believe much too little than a
little too much; and the exceptional credit at-
taching to the row of volumes of the S. P. R.'s
Proceedings, is due to the fixed intention of the
editors to proceed very slowly. Better a little
belief tied fast, better a small investment salted
downy than a mass of comparative insecurity.
But, however wise as a policy the S. P. R.'s
maxim may have been, as a test of truth, I be-
lieve it to be almost irrelevant. In most things

human the accusation of deliberate fraud

179

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and falsehood is grossly superficial. Man's
character is too sophistically mixed for the
alternative of "honest or dishonest'* to be
a sharp one. Scientific men themselves will
cheat — at public lectures — rather than let
experiments obey their well-known tendency
towards failure. I have heard of a lecturer on
physics, who had taken over the apparatus of
the previous incumbent, consulting him about
a certain machine intended to show that, how-
ever the peripheral parts of it might be
agitated, its centre of gravity remained^ im-
movable. "It mil wobble," he complained.
"Well,'' said the predecessor, apologetically,
"to tell the truth, whenever I used that ma-
chine I found it advisable to drive a nail
through the centre of gravity." I once saw a
distinguished physiologist, now dead, cheat
most shamelessly at a public lecture, at the
expense of a poor rabbit, and all for the sake
of being able to make a cheap joke about its
being an "American rabbit " — for no other,
he said, could survive such a wound as he pre-
tended to have given it.

180

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

To compare small men with great, I have
myself cheated shamelessly. In the early
days of the Sanders Theater at Harvard, I
once had charge of a heart on the physiology of
which Professor Newell Martin was giving a
popular lecture. This heart, which belonged
to a turtle, supported an index-straw which
threw a moving shadow, greatly enlarged,
upon the screen, while the heart pulsated.
When certain nerves were stimulated, the lec-
turer said, the heart would act in certain ways
which he described. But the poor heart was
too far gone and, although it stopped duly
when the nerve of arrest was excited, that was
the*final end of its life's tether. Presiding over
the performance, I was terrified at the fiasco,
and found myself suddenly acting like one of
those military geniuses who on the field of
battle convert disaster into victory. There
was no time for deliberation; so, with my
forefinger under a part of the straw that cast
no shadow, I found myself impulsively and
automatically imitating the rhythmical move-
ments which my colleague had prophesied the

181

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

heart would undergo. I kept the experiment
from failing; and not only saved my colleague
(and the turtle) from a humiliation that but
for my presence of mind would have been their
lot, but I established in the audience the true
view of the subject. The lecturer was stating
this; and the misconduct of one half -dead
specimen of heart ought not to destroy the
impression of his words. "There is no worse
lie than a truth misunderstood/' is a maxim
which I have heard ascribed to a former ven-
erated President of Harvard. The heart's
failure would have been misunderstood by the
audience and given the lie to the lecturer. It
was hard enough to make them understand
the subject anyhow; so that even now as I
write in cool blood I am tempted to think
that I acted quite correctly. I was acting for
the larger truth, at any rate, however auto-
matically; and my sense of this was probably
what prevented the more pedantic and literal
part of my conscience from checking the action
of my sympathetic finger. To this day the

memory of that critical emergency has made

182

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

me feel charitable towards all mediums who
make phenomwia come in one way when they
won't come easily in another. On the
principles of the S. P. R., my conduct on
that one occasion ought to discredit every-
thing I ever do, everything, for example, I
may write in this article, — a manifestly
unjust conclusion.

Fraud, conscious or unconscious, seems ubi-
quitous throughout the range of physical
phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence,
prevarication and fishing for clues are ubiqui-
tous in the m^ital manifestations of mediums.
If it be not everywhere fraud simulating real-
ity, one is tempted to say, then the reality (if
any reality there be) has the bad luck of being
fated everywhere to simulate fraud. The sug-
gestion of humbug seldom stops, and mixes it-
self with the best manifestations. Mrs. Piper's
control, "Rector," is a most impressive per-
sonage, who discerns in an extraordinary
degree his sitter's inner needs, and is capable
of giving elevated coimsel to fastidious and

critical minds. Yet in many respects he is an

;18S

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

arrant humbug — such he seems to me at least
— pretending to a knowledge and power to
which he has no title, nonplussed by contra-
diction, yielding to suggestion, and covering
his tracks with plausible excuses. Now the
non-" researching"' mind looks upon such phe-
nomena simply according to their face-pre-
tension and never thinks of asking what
they may signify below the surface. Since
they profess for the most part to be revealers
of spirit life, it is either as being absolutely
that, or as being absolute frauds, that they are
judged. The result is an inconceivably shallow
state of public opinion on the subject. One set
of persons, emotionally touched at hearing the
names of their loved ones given, and consoled
by assurances that they are "happy," ac-
cept the revelation, and consider spiritualism
" beautiful." More hard-headed subjects, dis-
gusted by the revelation's contemptible con-
tents, outraged by the fraud, and prejudiced
beforehand against all "spirits," high or low,
avert their minds from what they call such

"rot" or "bosh" entirely. Thus do two op-

184

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

posite sentimentalisms divide opinion between

them! A good expression of the "scientific"'

state of mind occurs in Huxley's "Life and

Letters'':

"I regret," he writes, "that I am unable to

accept the invitation of the Committee of the

Dialectical Society. ... I take no interest in

the subject. The only case of * Spiritualism'

I have ever had the opportunity of examining

into for myself was as gross an imposture as

ever came under my notice. But supposing

these phenomena to be genuine — they do not

interest me. If anybody would endow me with

the faculty of listening to the chatter of old

women and curates in the nearest provincial

town, I should decline the privilege, having

better things to do. And if the folk in the

spiritual world do not talk more wisely and

sensibly than their friends report them to do,

I put them in the same category. The only

good that I can see in the demonstration of

the * Truth of Spiritualism' is to furnish an

additional argument against suicide. Better

live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made

18fi

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

to talk twaddle by a * medium ' hired at a
guinea a Seance.^^^

Obviously the mind of the excellent Huxley
has here but two whole-souled categories,
namely revelation or imposture, to apperceive
the case by. Sentimental reasons bar revela-
tion out, for the messages, he thinks, are not
romantic enough for that; fraud exists any-
how; therefore the whole thing is nothing but
imposture. The odd point is that so few of
those who talk in this way realize that they and
the spiritists are using the sai^e major premise
and differing only in the minor. The major
premise is: "Any spirit-revelation must be
romantic." The minor of the spiritist is:
"This is romantic"; that of the Huxleyan is:
"this is dingy twaddle " — whence their op-
posite conclusions!

Meanwhile the first thing that anyone learns
who attends seriously to these phenomena is
that their causation is far too complex for our
feelings about what is or is not romantic
enough to be spiritual to throw any light upon

1 T. H. Huxley, " Life and Letters," I, 240.
186

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

it. The causal factors must be carefully dis-
tinguished and traced through series, from
their simplest to their strongest forms, before
we can begin to understand the various result-
ants in which they issue. Myers and Gumey
began this work, the one by his serial study
of the various sorts of "automatism," sensory
and motor, the other by his experimental
proofs that a split-off consciousness may
abide after a post-hypnotic suggestion has
been given. Here we have subjective factors;
but are not transsubjective or objective forces
also at work? Veridical messages, Apparitions,
movements without contact, seem frima facie
to be such. It was a good stroke on Gumey's
part to construct a theory of apparitions which
brought the subjective and the objective fac-
tors into harmonious co-operation. I doubt
whether this telepathic theory of Gumey's will
hold along the whole line of apparitions to
which he applied it, but it is unquestionable
that some theory of that mixed type is re-
quired for the explanation of all mediumistic

phenomena; and that when all the phsyco-

187

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

logical factors and elements involved have been
told oflf — and they are many — the question
still forces itself upon us: Are these all, or are
there indications of any residual forces acting
on the subject from beyond, or of any **meta-
psychic " faculty (to use Richet's useful term),
exerted by him? This is the problem that re-
quires real expertness, and this is where the
simple sentimentalisms of the spiritist and
scientist leave us in the lurch completely.

"Psychics '' form indeed a special branch of
education, in which experts are only gradually
becoming developed. The phenomena are as
massive and wide-spread as is anything in
Nature, and the study of them is as tedious,
repellent and undignified. To reject it for its
unromantic character is like rejecting bacteri-
ology because penicUlium glaucum grows on
horse-dung and bacterium termo lives in putre-
faction. Scientific men have long ago ceased
to think of the dignity of the materials they
work in. When imposture has been checked
off as far as possible, when chance coincidence

has been allowed for, when opportimities for

188

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

nonnal knowledge on the part of the subject
have been noted, and skill in ^'fishing " and
following clues unwittingly furnished by the
voice or face of bystanders have been counted
in, those who have the fullest acquaintance
with the phenomena admit that in good me-
diums there is a residuum of knowledge dis-
played that can only be called supernormal:
the medium taps some source of information
not open to ordinary people. Myers used the
word "telepathy " to indicate that the sitter's
own thoughts or feelings may be thus directly
tapped. Mrs. Sidgwick has suggested that if
living minds can be thus tapped telepathically,
so possibly may the minds of spirits Ibe simi-
larly tapped — if spirits there be. On this
view we should have one distinct theory of the
performances of a typical test-medium. They
would be all originally due to an odd tendency
to personate, found in her dream life as it ex-
presses itself in trance. [Most of us reveal such
a tendency whenever we handle a "ouija-
board '* or a "planchet," or let ourselves write

automatically with a pencil.] The result is a

189

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

"control," who purports to be speaJdng; and
all the resources of the automatist, including
his or her trance-faculty of tel^athy^ are
called into play in building this fictitious per-
sonage out plausibly. On such a view of the
control, the medium's tdU to personate runs the
whole show; and if spirits be involved in it at
all, they are passive beings, stray bits of whose
memory she is able to seize and use for her pur-
poses, without the spirit being any more aware
of it than the sitter is aware of it when his own
mind is similarly tapped.

This is one possible way of interpreting a
certain type of psychical phenomenon. It
uses psychological as well as "spiritual" fac-
tors, and quite obviously it throws open for us
far more questions than it answers, questions
about our subconscious constitution and its
curious tendency to humbug, about the tele-
pathic faculty, and about the possibihty of an
existent spirit-world.

I do not instance this theory to defend it,
but simply to show what complicated hy-
potheses one is inevitably led to consider, the

190

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

moment one looks at the facts in their com-
plexity and turns one's back on the nawe
alternative of "revelation or imposture,"
which is as far as either spiritist thought or
ordinary scientist thought goes. The phe-
nomena are endlessly complex in their factors,
and they are so little understood as yet that
off-hand judgments, whether of "spirits" or
of "bosh" are the one as silly as the other.
When we complicate the subject still farther
by considering what connection such things as
rappings, apparitions, poltergeists, spirit-pho-
tographs, and materializations may have with
it, the bosh end of the scale gets heavily
loaded, it is true, but your genuine inquirer
still is loath to give up. He lets the data col-
lect, and bides his time. He believes that
"bosh" is no more an ultimate element in
Nature, or a really explanatory category in
human life than " dirt " is in chemistry. Every
kind of " bosh "has its own factors and laws ; and
patient study will bring them definitely to light.
The only way to rescue the "pure bosh"

view of the matter is one which has sometimes

191

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

appealed to my own fancy, but which I
imagine few readers will seriously adopt. If,
namely, one takes the theory of evolution
radically, one ought to apply it not only to
the rock-strata, the animals and the plants,
but to the stars, to the chemical elements, and
to the laws of nature. There must have been
a far-ofif antiquity, one is then tempted to
suppose, when things were really chaotic.
Little by Kttle, out of all the haphazard possi-
bilities of that time, a few connected things
and habits arose, and the rudiment^ of regular
performance began. Every variation in the
way of law and order added itself to this nu-
cleus, which inevitably grew more consider-
able as history went on; while the aberrant
and inconstant variations, not being similarly
preserved, disappeared from being, wandered
oflf as unrelated vagrants, or else remained so
imperfectly connected with the part of the
world that had grown regular as only to mani-
fest their existence by occasional lawless intru-
sions, like those which "psychic'' phenomena

now make into our scientifically organized

192

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

world. On such a view, these phenomena
ought to remain **pure bosh" forever, that is,
they ought to be forever intractable to intel-
lectual methods, because they should not yet
be organized enough in themselves to follow
any laws. Wisps and shreds of the original
chaos, they would be connected enough with
the cosmos to affect its periphery every now
and then, as by a momentary whiff or touch or
gleam, but not enough ever to be followed up
and hunted down and bagged. Their relation
to the cosmos would be tangential solely.

Looked at dramatically, most occult phe-
nomena make just this] sort of impression.
They are inwardly as incoherent as they are
outwardly wayward and fitful. If they ex-
press anything, it is pure "bosh," pure dis-
continuity, accident, and disturbance, with no
law apparent but to interrupt, and no purpose
but to baffle. They seem like stray vestiges
of that primordial irrationality, from which all
our rationalities have been evolved.

To settle dogmatically into this bosh-view
would save labor, but it would go against too

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

many intellectual jM^epossessions to be adopted
save as a last resort of despair. Your psychi-
cal researcher therefore bates no jot of hope,
and has faith that when we get our data num-
erous enough, some sort of rational treatment
of them will succeed.

When I hear good people say (as they often
say, not without show of reason), that dab-
bling in such phenomena reduces -us to a sort
of jelly, disintegrates the critical faculties,
liquifies the character, and makes of one a
gobe-numche generally, I console myself by
thinking of my friwids Frederic Myers and
Richard Hodgson. These men lived exclu-
sively for psychical research, and it converted
both to spiritism. Hodgson would have been
a man among men anywhere; but I doubt
whether under any other baptism he would
have been that happy, sober and righteous
form of energy which his face proclaimed
him in his later years, when heart and head
alike were wholly satisfied by his occupation.
Myers' character also grew stronger in every
particular for his devotion to the same inquir-

PSYCHICAL EESEAECH

ies. Brought up on literature and sentiment,
something of a courtier, passionate, disdainful,
and impatient naturally, he was made over
again from the day when he took up psychi-
cal research seriously. He became learned in
scieiK^, circumspect, democratic in sympathy,
endlessly patient, and above all, happy. The
fortitude of his last hours touched the heroic,
so completely were the atrocious sufferings of
his body cast into insignificance by his interest
in the cause he lived for. When a man's
pursuit gradually makes his face shine and
grow handsome, you may be sure it is a
worthy one. Both Hodgson and Myers kept
growing ever handsomer and stronger-looking.
Such personal examples will convert no one,
and of course they ought not to. Nor do I
seek at all in this article to convert any one to
my belief that psychical research is an import-
ant branch of science. To do that, I should
have to quote evidence; and those for whom
the volumes of S. P. R. "Proceedings'* already
published count for nothing would remain in

their dogmatic slumber, though one rose from

195

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the dead. No, not to convert readers, but
simply to pvt my own state of mind upon record
publicly is the purpose of my present writ-
—5^ ing. Some one said to me a short time ago,

that after my twenty-five years of dabbling
in "Psychics," it would be rather shameful
were I unable to state any definite conclu-
sions whatever as a consequence. I had to
agree; so I now proceed to take up the chal-
» lenge and express such convictions as have
been engendered in me by that length of ex-
perience, be the same true or false ones. I may
be dooming myself to the pit in the eyes of
better-judging posterity; I may be raising my-
self to honor; I am willing to take the risk, for
what I shall write is my truth, as I now see it.

I began this article by confessing myself

baffled. I am baffled, as to spirit-return, and

as to many other special problems. I am also

constantly baffled as to what to think of this

or that particular story, for the sources of

error in any one observation are seldom fully

knowable. But weak sticks make strong fag-

196

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

gots; and when the stories fall into consistent
sorts that point each in a definite direction, one
gets a sense of being in presence of genuinely
natural types of phenomena. As to there being ^
such real natural types of phenomena ignored
by orthodox science, I am not baffled at all,
for I am fully convinced of it. One cannot ^
get demonstrative proof here. One has to
follow one's personal sense, which, of course, is
liable to err, of the dramatic probabilities of
nature. Our critics here obey their sense of
dramatic probability as much as we do. Take
"raps" for example, and the whole business of
objects moving without contact. "Nature,"
thinks the scientific man, is not so unutter-
ably silly. The cabinet, the darkness, the
tying, suggest a sort of human rat-hole life ex-
clusively and "swindling" is for him the dra-
matically sufficient explanation. It probably
is, in an indefinite majority of instances; yet
it is to me dramatically improbable that the
swindling should not have accreted round
some originally genuine nucleus. If we look

at human imposture as a historic phenom-

197

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

enon, we find it always imitative. One
swindler imitates a previous swindler, but
the first swindler of that kind imitated some
one who was honest. You can no more a:eate
an absolutely new trick than you can create a
new word without any previous basis. — You
don't know how to go about it. Try, reader,
yourself, to invent an unprecedented kind
of "physical phenomenon of spiritualism."
When / try, I find myself mentally turning
over the r^ular medium-stock, and thinking
how I might improve some item. This being
the dramatically probable human way, I think
diflFerently of the whole type, taken collec-
tively, from the way in which I may think of
the single instance. I find myself believing
that there is ^^something in" these never
ending reports of physical phenomena, al-
though I have n't yet the least positive notion
of the something. It becomes to my mind
simply a very worthy problem for investiga-
tion. Either I or the scientist is of course a
fool, with our opposite views of probability

here; and I only wish he might fed the lia-

198

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

•bility, as cordially as I do, to pertain to both
of us.

I fear I look on Nature generally with more
charitable eyes than his, though perhaps he
would pause if he realized as I do, how vast
the fraudulency is which inconsistency he
must attribute to her. Nature is brutal
enough, Heaven knows; but no one yet has
held her non-human side to be dishonesty and
even in the human sphere deliberate deceit is
far rarer than the " classic'* intellect, with its
few and rigid categories, was ready to acknowl-
edge. There is a hazy penumbra in us all
where lying and delusion meet, where passion
rules beliefs as well as conduct^ and where the
term "scoundrel" does not clear up every-
thing to the depths as it did for our forefathers.
The first automatic writing I ever saw was
forty years ago. I unhesitatingly thought of
it as deceit, although it contained vague ele-
ments of supernormal knowledge. Since then
I have come to see in automatic writing one
example of a department of human activity

as vast as it is enigmatic. Every sort of per-^

109

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

son is liable to it, or to something equivalent
to it; and whoever encourages it in himself
finds himself personating someone else, either
signing what he writes by fictitious name, or
spelling out, by ouija-board or table-tips, mes-
sages from the departed. Our subconscious
region seems, as a rule, to be dominated either
by a crazy "will to make-believe,'* or by some
curious external force impelling us to per-
sonation. The first diflFerence between the
psychical researcher and the inexpert person
is that the former realizes the commonness
and typicality of the phenomenon here, while
the latter, less informed, thinks it so rare as to
be imworthy of attention. / toish to go on
record for the commonness.

The next thing I wish to go on record for is
the presence^ in the midst of all the humbug,
of really supernormal knowledge. By this I
mean knowledge that cannot be traced to the
ordinary sources of information — the senses
namely, of the automatist. In really strong
mediums this knowledge seems to be abimdant,

though it is usually spotty, capricious and

200

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

unconnected. Really strong mediums are rari-
ties ; but when one starts with them and works
downwards into less brilliant regions of the au-
tomatic life, one tends to interpret many slight
but odd coincidences with truth as possibly
rudimentary forms of this kind of knowledge. •
What is one to think of this queer chapter
in human nature? It is odd enough on any
view. If all it means is a preposterous and in-
ferior monkey-like tendency to f drge messages,
systematically embedded in the soul of all of
us, it is weird; and weirder still that it should
then own all this supernormal information.
If on the other hand the supernormal infor-
mation be the key to the phenomenon, it
ought to be superior; and then how ought we
to account for the "wicked partner," and for
the undeniable mendacity and inferiority of so
much of the performance? We are thrown,
for our conclusions, upon our instinctive sense
of the dramatic probabilities of nature. My
own dramatic sense tends instinctively to
picture the situation as an interaction between

slumbering faculties in the automatist's mind

201

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and a cosmic environment of other conscious-
ness of some sort which is able to work upon
them. If there were in the universe a lot of
diffuse soul-stuff, unable of itself to get into
consistent personal form, or to take permanent
possession of an organism, yet always craving
to do so, it might get its head into the air, para-
sitically, so to speak, by profiting by weak
spots in the armor of human minds, and slip^
ping in and stirring up there the sleeping ten-
dency to personate. It would induce habits in
the subconscious region of the mind it used
thus, and would seek above all things to pro-
long its social opportunities by making itself
agreeable and plausible. It would drag stray
scraps of truth with it from the wider envi-
ronment, but would betray its mental inferi-
ority by knowing little how to weave them
into any important or significant story.

This, I say, is the dramatic view which my
mind spontaneously takes, and it has the ad-
vantage of falling into line with ancient human
traditions. The views of others are just as

dramatic, for the phenomenon is activated by

202

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

will of some sort anyhow, and wills give rise to
dramas. The spiritist view, as held by Messrs.
Hyslop and Hodgson, sees a ""will to com-
municate/' struggling through inconceivable
layers of obstruction in the conditions. I have
heard Hodgson liken the difficulties to those
of two persons who on earth should have only
dead-drunk servants to use as their messengers.
The scientist, for his part, sees a "will to de-
ceive,'' watching its chance in all of us, and
able (possibly?) to use "telepathy'' in its
service.

Which kind of will, and how many kinds of
will are most inh^ently probable? Who can
say with certainty? The only certainty is that
the phenomena are enormously complex, es-
pecially if one includes in them such intellect-
ual flights of mediumship as Swedenborg's,
and if one tries in any way to work the physi-
cal phenomena in. That is why I personally
am as yet neither a convinced believer in
parasitic demons, nor a spiritist, nor a scien-
tist, but still remain a psychical researcher
waiting for more facts before concluding.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is
limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmati-
cally emerges, and that is this, that we with
our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees
in the forest. The maple and the pine may
whisper to each other with their leaves, and
Conanicut and Newport hear each other's fog-
horns. But the trees also commingle their roots
in the darkness underground, and the islands
also hang together through the ocean's bot-
tom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic
consciousness, against which our individual-
ity builds but accidental fences, and into which
our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea
or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness is
circumscribed for adaptation to our external
earthly environment, but the fence is weak in
spots, and fitful influences from beyond leak
in, showing the otherwise unverifiable common
connection. Not only psychic research, but
metaphysical philosophy, and speculative biol-
ogy are led in their own ways to look with
favor on some such "panpsychic" view of the

universe as this. Assuming this conmGion reser-

204

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

voir of consciousness to exist, this bank upon
which we all draw, and in which so many of
earth's memories must in some way be stored,
or mediums would not get at them as they
do, the question is. What is its own structure?
What is its inner topography? This question,
first squarely formulated by Myers, deserves
to be called "Myers* problem" by scientific
men hereafter. What are the conditions of
individuation or insulation in this mother-sea?
To what tracts, to what active systems func-
tioning separately in it, do personalities cor-
respond? Are individual " spirits " constituted
there? How numerous, and of how many
hierarchic orders may these then be? How
permanent? How transient? And how con-
fluent with one another may they become?

What again, are the relations between the
cosmic consciousness and matter? Are there
subtler forms of matter which upon occasion
may enter into functional connection with the
individuations in the psychic sea, and then,
and then only, show themselves? — So that

our ordinary human experience, on its material

i05

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

as well as on its mental side, would appear to
be only an extract from the larger psycho-
physical world?

Vast, indeed, and difficult is the inquirer's
prospect here, and the most significant data
for his purpose will probably be just these
dingy little mediumistic facts which the Hux-
leyan minds of our time find so unworthy of
their attention. But when was not the science
of the future stirred to its conquering activi-
ties by the little rebellious exceptions to the
science of the present? Hardly, as yet, has
the surface of the facts called "psychic" be-
gun to be scratched for scientific purposes. It
is through following these facts, I am per-
suaded, that the greatest scientific conquests
of the coming generation will be achieved.
Kiihn ist das Miihen^ herrlich der LohnI

.c \ ' ,, t'- c— r /. .-^, _, /.•;

206

ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF,
THE EARTHQUAKE

ON SOME MENTAL EFFECTS OF
THE EARTHQUAKE^

IT HEN I departed from Harvard for Stan-
ford University last December, almost the
last good-by I got was that of my old Cali-
fomian friend .B^ "I hope they'll give you
a touch of earthquake while you 're there, so
that you may also become acquainted with
that Califomian institution/'

Accordingly, when, lying awake at about
half past five on the morning of April 18 in
my little "flat'' on the campus of Stanford, I
felt the bed begin to waggle, my first con-
sciousness was one of gleeful recognition of
the nature of the movement.-^ "By Jove,"
I said to myself, "here's B'ssold earthquake.

^ At the time of the San Francisco earthquake the
author was at Leland Stanford University nearby.
He succeeded in getting into San Francisco on the
morning of the earthquake, and spent the remainder
of the day in the city. These observations appeared
in the Youth's Companion for June 7, 1906.

209

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

after all!*'^ And then, as it went crescendo^
"And a jolly good one it is, too! '^ I said. ^
^Sitting up involuntarily, and taking a
kneeling position, I was thrown down on my
face as it went /orator shaking the room exactly
as a terrier shakes a rat. Then everything
that was on anything else slid oflf to the floor,
over went bureau and chiflFonier with a crash,
as the fortissimo was reached ; plaster cracked,
an awful roaring noise seemed to fill the outer
air, and in an instant all was still again^t^e
the soft babble of human voices from far aiJd
near that soon began to make itself heard, as
the inhabitants in costumes negligSs in various
degrees sought the greater safety of the street
and yielded to the passionate desire for sym-
pathetic communication, it.

The thing was over, as I understand the
Lick Observatory to have declared, in forty-
eight seconds. To me it felt as if about that
length of time, although I have heard others
say that it seemed to them longer. In my
case, sensation and emotion were so strong

that little thought, and no reflection or voli-

210

THE EARTHQUAKE

"ire possible in the short time consumed
j^nomenon.
motion consisted wholly of glee and
.ation; glee at the vividness which sudi

^ abstract idea or verbal term as "earth-
quake" could put on when translated into
sensible reality and verified concretely; and
admiration at the way in which the frail
little wooden house could hold itself together in
spite of such a shaking. I felt no trace what-
ever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome.

"Go it," I almost cried aloud, "and go it
stfongerl "

I ran into my wife's room, and found that
she, although awakened from sound sleep, had
felt no fear, either. Of all the persons whom
I later interrogated, very few had felt any
fear while the shaking lasted, although many
had had a "turn," as they realized their
narrow escapes from bookcases or bricks
from chimney-breasts falling on their beds
and pillows an instant after they had left
them.

As soon as I could think, I discerned retro-

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

spectively certain peculiar ways in which my
consciousness had taken in the phenomenon.
These ways were quite spontaneous, and, so to
speak, inevitable and irresistible.

First, I personified the earthquake as a per-
manent individual entity. It was the earth-
quake of my friend B's augury, which had
been lying low and holding itself back during
all the intervening months, in order, on that
lustrous April morning, to invade my room,
and energize the more intensely and triumph-
antly. It came, moreover, directly to me.
It stole in behind my back, and once inside
the room, had me all to itself, and could
manifest itself convincingly. Animus and
intent were never more present in any human
action, nor did any human activity ever more
definitely point back to a living agent as its
source and origin.

All whom I consulted on the point agreed
as to this feature in their experience. "It
expressed intention," "It was vicious," "It
was bent on destruction," "It wanted to
show its power," or what not. To me, it

THE EARTHQUAKE

wanted simply to manifest th e full meani ng of
its name. But what was this "It '7 To
some, apparently, a vague demonic power;
to me* an individualized being, B's earth-
quake, namely.

One informant interpreted it as the end of
the world and the beginning of the final
judgment. This was a lady in a San Fran-
cisco hotel, who did not think of its being an
earthquake till after she had got into the
street and some one had explained it to her.
She told me that the theological interpreta-
tion had kept fear from her mind, and made
her take the shaking calmly. For "science,^'
when the tensions in the earth's crust reach
the breaking-point, and strata fall into an
altered equilibrium, earthquake is simply
the collective name of all the cracks and
shakings and disturbances that happen. They
are the earthquake. But for me the earth-
quake was the cause of the disturbances, and
the perceptiou^^f -it as a living ag ent was
irresistible. It had an overpowering dramatic

convincingness.

213

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

I realize now better than ever how inevit-
able were men's earlier mythologic versions of
such catastrophes, and how artificial and
against the grain of our spontaneous perceiv-
ing are the later habits into which science
educates us. It was simply impossible for
untutored men to take earthquakes into their
minds as anything but supernatural warninjgs
or retributions.
I)( A good instance of the way in which the
tremendousness of a catastrophe may banish
fear was given me by a Stanford student.
He was in the fourth story of Encina Hall, an
immense stone dormitory building. Awakened
from sleep, he recognized what the disturb-
ance was, and sprang from the bed, but was
thrown oflf his feet in a moment, while his
books and furniture fell round him. Then,
with an awful, sinister, grinding roar, every-
thing gave way, and with chimneys, floor-
beams, walls and all, he descended through
the three lower stories of the building into the
basement. "This is my end, this is my death,'*

he felt; but all the while no trace of fear.

214

THE EABTHQUAKB

The experience was too overwhelming for
anything but passive surrender to it. (Cer-
tain heavy chimneys had fallen in, carrying
the whole centre of the building with them.)

Arrived at the bottom, he found himself
with rafters and debris round him, but not
pinned in or crushed. He saw daylight, and
crept toward it through the obstacles. Then,
realizing that he was in his nightgown, and
feeling no pain anywhere, h jsjrst thought was

to Jg et back to his, rgnm rtiH finf^ somfi m^rft

preseni^leclpthing- The stairways at Encina
Hall are at the ends of the building. He
made his way to one of them, and went up
the four flights, only to find his room no
longer extant. Then he noticed pain in his
feet, which had been injured, and came down
the stairs with diflSiculty. When he talked
with me ten days later he had been in hospital
a week, was very thin and pale, and went
on crutches, and was dressed in borrowed
clothing.

So much for Stanford, where all our experi-
ences seem to have been very similar. Nearly

215

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

all our chimneys went down, some of them
disintegrating from top to bottom; parlor
floors were covered with bricks; plaster
strewed the floors; furniture was everywhere
upset and dislocated; but the wooden dwel-
lings sprang back to their original position,
and in house after house not a window stuck
or a door scraped at top or bottom. Wood
architecture was triumphant! Everybody
was excited, but the excitement at first, at
any rate, seemed to be almost joyous. Hctc
at last jyas a Te (d earthj[uake after so many
yearsjgfjiarmless waggle! Above all, there
was an irresistible desire to talk about it,
and exchange experiences.

Most people slept outdoors for several sub-
sequent nights, partly to be safer in case of a
recurrence, but also to work off their emotion,
and get the full unusualness out of the experi-
ence. The vocal babble of early-waking girls
and boys from the gardens of the campus,
mingling with the birds' songs and the exqui-
site weather, was for three or four days a

delightful sunrise phenomenon.

216

THE EARTHQUAKE

Now turn to San Francisco, thirty-five
miles distant, from which an automobile ere
long brought us the dire news of a city in
ruins, with fires beginning at various points,
and the water-supply interrupted. (I was for-
tunate enough to board the only train of
cars — a very small one — that got up to the
city; fortunate enough also to escape in the
evening by the only train that left it. This
gave me and my valiant feminine escort
some four hours of observatiom My business
is with "subjective" phenomena exclusively;
so I will say nothing of the material ruin that
greeted us on every hand — the daily papers
and the weekly journals have done full
justice to that topic. By midday, when we
reached the city, the pall of smoke was vast
and the dynamite detonations had begun,
but the troops, the police and the firemen
seemed to have established order, dangerous
neighborhoods were roped oflf everywhere and
picketed, saloons closed, vehicles impressed,
and every one at work who could work.

It was indeed a strange sight to see an entire
817

MEMORIES AND STUDIE.S

population in the streets, busy as ants in an
uncovered ant-hill scurrying to save their eggs
and larvae. Every horse, and everything on
wheels in the city, from hucksters' wagons to
automobiles, was being loaded with what
effects could be scraped together from houses
which the advancing flames were threatening.
The sidewalks were covered with well-dressed
men and women, carrying baskets, bundles,
valises, or dragging trunks to spots of greater
temporary safety, soon to be dragged farther,
as the fire kept spreading!

In the safer quarters, every doorstep was
covered with the dwelling's tenants, sitting
surrounded with their more indispensable
chattels, and ready to flee at a minute's notice.
I think every one must have fasted on that
day, for I saw no one eating. There was no
appearance of general dismay, and little of
chatter or of inco-ordinated excitement.

Every one seemed doggedly bent on achiev-
ing the job which he had set himself to per-
form; and the faces, although somewhat

tense and set and grave, were inexpressive of

218

THE EARTHQUAKE

emotion. I noticed only three persons over-
come, two Italian women, very poor, embrac-
ing an aged fellow countrywoman, and all
weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness
were the only inner states that one could
read on countenances.

With lights forbidden in the houses, and the
streets lighted only by the conflagration, it was
apprehended that the criminals of San Fran-
cisco would hold high carnival on the ensuing
night. But whether they feared the discip-
linary methods of the United States troops,
who were visible everywhere, or whether
they were themselves solemnized by the im-
mensity of the disaster, they lay low and did
not "manifest,'* either then or subsequently.

The only very discreditable thing to human
nature that occurred was later, when hundreds
of lazy "bimimers" found that they could
keep camping in the parks, and make alimen-
tary storage-batteries of their stomachs, even
in some cases getting enough of the free rations
in their huts or tents to last them well into the

summer. This charm of pauperized vaga-

219

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

bondage seems all along to have been Satan's
most serious bait to human nature. There
was theft from the outset, but confined, I
believe, to petty pilfering.

Cash in hand was the only money, and mil-
Uonaires and their families were no better oflf
in this respect than any one. Whoever got a
vehicle could have the use of it; but the rich-
est often went without, and spent the first
two nights on rugs on the bare ground, with
nothing but what their own arms had rescued.
Fortunately, those nights were dry and com-
paratively warm, and Californians are ac-
customed to camping conditions in the sum-
mer, so suffering from exposure was less great
than it would have been elsewhere. By the
fourth night, which was rainy, tents and huts
hajj, brought most campers under cover,
(^went through the city again eight days
later. The fire was out, and about a quarter
of the area stood unconsumed. Intact sky-
scrapers dominated the smoking level majes-
tically and superbly — they and a few walls

that had survived the overthrow. Thus has

220

,THE EARTHQUAKE

the courage of our architects and builders
received triumphant vindication!

The inert elements of the population had
mostly got away, and those that remained
seemed what Mr. H. G. Wells calls "eflBcients."
Sheds were already going up as temporary
starting-points of business. Every one looked
cheerful, in spite of the awful discontinuity
of past and future, with every familiar asso-
ciation with material things dissevered; and
the discipline and order were practically
perfect.

As these notes of mine must be short, I
had better turn to my more generalized
reflections.

1 Two things in retrospect strike me espe-
cially, and are the most emphatic of all my
impressions. Both are reassuring as to human
napire.

/The first of these was the rapidity of the
improvisation of order out of chaos^ It is
clear that just as in every thousand human
beings there will be statistically so many

artists, so many athletes, so many thinkers,

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and go many potentially good soldiers, so
there will be so many potential organizers in
times of emergency. In point of fact, not
only in the great city, but in the outlying
towns, these natural ordermakers, whether
amateurs or officiak, came to the front im-
mediately. There seemed to be no possi-
bility which there was not some one there to
think of, or which within twenty-four hours
was not in some way provided for.

A good illustration is this: Mr. Keith is the
great landscape-painter of the Pacific slope,
and his pictures, which are many, are artistic-
ally and pecuniarily precious. Two citizens,
lovers of his work, early in the day diverted
their attention from all other interests, their
own private ones included, and made it their
duty to visit every place which they knew to
contain a Keith painting. They cut them from
their frames, rolled them up, and in this way
got all the more important ones into a place
of safety.

When they then sought Mr. Keith, to con-
vey the joyous news to him, they found him

222

THE EARTHQUAKE

still in his studio, which was remote from the
fire, begimiing a new painting. Having given
up his previous work for lost, he had resolved
to lose no time in making what amends he
could for the disaster.

The completeness of organization at Palo.
Alto, a town of ten thousand inhabitants
close to Stanford University, was almost
comical. People feared exodus on a large
scale of the rowdy elements of San Francisco.
In point of fact, very few refugees came to
Palo Alto. But within twenty-four hours,
rations, clothing, hospital, quarantine, dis-
infection, washing, police, military, quarters
in camp and in houses, printed information,
employment, all ^ere provided for under the
care of so many volunteer committees.

Much of this readiness was American, much
of it Calif omian; but I believe that every
country in a similar crisis would have dis-
played it in a way to astonish the spectators.
Like soldiering, it lies always latent in human
nature;

The second thing that struck me was the
228

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

universal equanimity. We soon got letters
from the East, ringing with anxiety and
pathos; but I now know fully what I have
always believed, that the pathetic way of feel-
ing great disasters belongs rather to the point
of view of people at a distance than to the
immediate victims. I heard not a single
really pathetic or sentimental word in Cali-
fornia expressed by any one.

The terms "awful," "dreadful" fell often
enough from people's lips, but always with a
sort of abstract meaning, and with a face that
seemed to admire th e vastn^ ss^ of the catas-
iyoplip ^g much as it bewailed its cutEingness.
When talk was not directly practical, I might
almost say that it expressed (at any rate
in the nine days I was there) a tendency
more toward nervous excitement than toward
grief. The hearts concealed private bitterness
enough, no doubt, but the tongues disdained to
dwell on the misfortunes of self, when almost
everybody one spoke to had suflfered equally.

Surely the cutting edge of all our usual

misfortunes comes from their character of

224

THE EARTHQUAKE

loneliness. We lose our health, our wife or
children die, our house burns down, or our
money is made way with, and the world goes
on rejoicing, leaving us on one side and count-
ing us out from all its business. In California
every one, to some degree, was suffering, and
one's private miseries were merged in the vast
general sum of privation and in the all-ab-
sorbing practical problem of general recuper-
ation. The cheerfulness, or, at any rate, the
steadfastness of tone, was imiversal. Not a
single whine or plaintive word did I hear
from the hundred losers whom I spoke to.
Instead of that there was a temper of help-
fulness beyond the counting.

It is easy to glorify this as something charac-
teristically American, or especially Califor-
nian. Californian education has, of course,
made the thought of all possible recuperations
easy. In an exhausted country, with no mar-
ginal resources, the outlook on the future
would be much darker. But I like to think
that what I write of is a normal and imiversal

trait of human nature. In our drawing*rooms

225

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and offices we wonder how people ever do go
through battles, sieges and shipwrecks. We
quiver and sicken in imagination, and think
those hCToes superhuman. Physical pain,
whether suffered alone or in company, is
always more or less unnerving and intolerable.
But mental pathos and anguish, I fancy, are
usually effects of distance. At the place of
action, where all are concerned together,
healthy animal insensibility and heartiness
take their place. At San Francisco the need
will continue to be awful, and there will doubt-
less be a crop of nervous wrecks before the
weeks and months are over, but meanwhile
the commonest men, simply because they are
men*^will go on, singly and collectively^^show-
ing^this admirable fortitude of temper. )

£26

THE ENERGIES OP MEN

THE ENERGIES OP MEN*

Everyone knows what it is to start a piece
of work, either intellectual or muscular, feel-
ing stale — or ooldy as an Adirondack guide
once put it to me. And everybody knows
\ what it is to "warm up'" to his job. The
process of warming up gets particularly '
striking in the phenomenon known as "sec-x
ond wind.'' On usual occasions we make a
practice of stopping an occupation as soon as
we meet the first eflfective layer (so to call it)
of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or
worked " enough,'' so we desist. That amount
of fatigue is an eflBcacious obstruction on this

^ This was the title originally given to the Presiden-
tial Address delivered before the American Philosophi-
cal Association at Columbia University, December 28,
1906, and published as there delivered in the Philosoph-
ical Review for January, 1907. The address was later
published, after slight alteration, in the American
Magazine for October, 1907, under the title "The
Powers of Men." The more popular form is here
reprinted under the title which the author himself
preferred.

2£9

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

side of which our usual life is cast. But if an
unusual necessity f orces us to press onward,
a surprismg Hm^g occurs* ThQ fatigiie gets
worse up to a certain critical point, when
gifadu^ly or suddenly it passes away, and we
are fresher tfean bdwe. We have evideat^y
ta{^>ed a level ol a^w euCTgy, masked until
then by the fatigue-ohstade usually obeyed.
There may be layer «ft» layer of this expe-
rience. A third and a fourth "wind*' mny
supervene. Mental activity shows the phe-
nomenon as well as pl^rsdcal^ and in except
tional cases we may find* beyond the veiy
extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease
and power that we nevw dreamed ourselves
to own, — sources of strwigth habitually not
taxed at all, because habitually we never
push throu^ the obstruction, never pass
those early critical points.

For many years I have mused on the idie-
nomenon of second wind, trying to find a
physiological theory. It is evident that our
organism has stored-up reserves of ^lergy

that are ordinarily not called upon, but that

930

THE ENEBGIES OF MEN

may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata
of combustible or explosible material, dis-
continuously arranged, but ready for use by
anyone who probes so deep, and repairing
themselves by rest as well as do the superficial
strata. Most of us continue living unneces-
sarily near our surface^ Our energy-budget
is like our nutritive budget. Physiologists
say that a man Is in "nutritive equilibrium"
when day after day he neither gains nor loses
weight. But the odd thing is that this con-
dition may obtain on astonishing^ different
amounts of food. T ake a ^ man in nutritive
equilibrium, and systematically mcrease or
lessen his rations.^ In the first case he will
begin to gain weight, in the second case to
lose it. The change will be greatest on the
first day,, less on the second, less still on the
third; and so on, till he has gained all that he
will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on that
altered diet. He is now in nutritive equilib-
rium again, but with a new weight; and this
neither lessens nor increases because his

various combustion-processes have adjusted

2S1

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

themselves to the changed dietary, j He gets
rid, in one way or another, of just as much N,
C, H, etc., as he takes in per diem.

Just so one can be in what I might call
"e£Bciency-equilibrium" (neither gaining nor
losing power when once the equilibrium is
reached) on astonishingly different quantities
of work, no matter in what direction the work
may be measured. It may be physical work,
intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual
work.

0£ course there are limits: the trees don't
grow into the sky. But the plain fact
remains that men the world over possess
amounts of resource which only very excep*
tional individuals push to their extremes of
use. But the very same individual, pushing his
energies to their extreme, may in a vast num-
ber of cases keep the pace up day after day,
and find no "reaction'' of a bad sort, so long
as decent h ygien ic conditions are preserved.
His more active rate of energizing does
not wreck him; for the organism adapts

itself, and as the rate of waste augments,

^32

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

augments correspondingly the rate of re-
pair.

I say the rate and not the time of repair.
The busiest man needs no more hours of
rest than the idler. Some years ago Professor
Patrick, of the Iowa State University, kept
three young men awake for four days and
nights. When his observations on them were
finished, the subjects were permitted to sleep
themselves out. All awoke from this sleep
completely refreshed, but the one who took
longest to restore himself from his long vigil
only slept one-third more time than was
regular with him.

If my reader will put together these two

conceptions, first, that few men live at their

maximum of energy, and second, that anyone

may be in vital equilibrium at very diflFerent

rates of energizing, he will find, I think, that

a very pretty practical problem of national

economy, as well as of individual ethics, opens

upon his view. In rough terms, we may say

that a man who energizes below his normal

maximum fails by just so much to profit by

^33

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

his ch ance at life; and that a nation filled
with such men is inferior to a nation run at
higher presi^ire. The problem is, then, how
"l^an men be trained up to their most useful
' pitch of energy? And how can nations make
such training most accesssible to all their sons
and daughters. This, after all, is only the
general problem of education, formulated
in slightly different terms.

"Rough" terms, I said just now, because
the words "energy" and "maximum" may
easily suggest only quantity to the reader's
/ mind^ whereas in measuring the human ener-
^gies of which I speak, qualities as well as
quantities have to be taken into account.
Everyone feels that his total power rises wiien
he passes to a higher qualitative level of life.

Writing is higher than walking, thinking is
higher than writing, deciding higher than
thinking, deciding "no" higher than deciding
"yes " — at least the man who passes from one
of these activities to another will usually say
that each later one involves a greater element
^ of inner work t han the earlier ones, even thoi^h

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

the total heat given out or thje foot-pounds ex-
pended by the organism, may be less- Just
how to conceive this inner work physiologi-
cally is afi^y^t impossible, but psychologically
we all know what the word means. We need
a particular spur or effort to start us uponsV
inner wOTk; it tires us to sustain it; and when
long sustained, we know how easily we lapse.
When I speak of "energiring," and* its rates
and levels and sources, I mean therefore^ our ^x
inner as well as oux outer work J

t no one think, then, that our problem
of individual and national economy is solely
that ol the maximum of pounds raisable
against gravity, the maximum of locomotion,^
or of agitation ol any sort, that human beings
can accomplish. That might signify little
more than hurrying, and jumping about in
inco-ordinated ways; whereas inner work,
thou^^it so often reinforces outer work,>(
quite as often means its arrest. To relax,
to say to ourselves (with the "new thought-
ers'") "Peace! be still! " is sometimes a great

achievement of inner work. When I speak

9S&

Xipner

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

of hugaaiLJSBg^gidflS ^^ general, the jigajder
must tt ^^^f^T'^ iiTif1pr<gtiinJ that btitti tntnl of
activities^ some- outer- ^mc Lsome inner^ some
^ muscul ar^ som e emotional, so me moral, s ome
spiritual, of whose waxing^ ^ waning in
himself he is at all times so well awa re. How
to keep it at an appreciable maximum? How
not to let the level lapse? That is the great
problem. But the work of men and women is
of innumerable kinds, each kind being, as we
say, carrried on by a particular faculty; so the
great problem splits into two sub-problems,
thus:

(1). What are the limits of human faculty
/ in various directions?

(2). By what diversity of means, in the
, diflFering types of human beings, may the
faculties be stimulated to their best results?

Read in one way, these two questions sound

both trivial and familiar: there is a sense in

which we have all asked them ever since we

were born. Yet as a methodical programme

of scientific inquiry^ I doubt whether they have

/ever been seriously taken up. If answered

236

,THE ENERGIES OF MEN

fully, almost the whole of mental science and
of the science of conduct would find a place
under them. I propose, in what follows, to
press them on the reader's attention in an
informal way.

i The first point to agree upon in this enter-
prise is that ds a rule men habitually use only
a small part of the powers '0hich they actually ^
possess and which they might use under appro-
priate conditions.

Every one is familiar with the phenomenon
of feeling more or less alive on different days.
Every one knows on any given day that there
are energies slumbering in him which the
incitements of that day do not call forth, but
which he might display if these were greater.
Most of us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed
upon us, keeping us below our highest notch
of clearness in discernment, sureness in rea-
soning, or firmness in deciding. Compared
with what we ought to be, we are only half
awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are
checked. We are making use of only a small

part of our possible mental and physical

«87

MBM0EIE8 AND STUDIES

resources. In some parsons this sens^ of
being cut oflF from their rightful resources is
extreme, and we then get the formidable
( neurasthenic^ and^-psychasthenic ^conditions,
with life grown into one tissue of impossi-
bilities, that so many medical books decribe.
H Stating the thing broadly, the human
individual thus lives usually far within his
limits; he possesses powers of various sorts
which he habitually fails to use. He ener-
gizes below his tnaximuniy and he behaves
. belpv\r_Jiis gj^imum. In elementary faculty,
in co-ordination, in power of inhibition and
control, in evety conceivable way, his life is
/contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric
\ subject — but with less excuse, for the poor
hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it
is only an invet^ate liahit ' — the habit of in-
feriority to our full self — that is bad.

Admit so much, then, and admit also that
the charge of being inferior to their full self
is far truer of some men than of others; then
the practical question ensues: to what do the

better men owe their escape f and, in the fluc^

S88

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

tuaiions which all men feel in their own degree

of energizing y to what are the imjrrovements dtse,

when they occur?

In general terms the answer is plain:

Either some unusual stimulus fills them with

emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of

necessity induces th^n to make an extra

effort of will. Excitements, ideas, and efforts, V i/'^^

in a word, are what carry us over the dam.

In those "hyperesthetic'" conditions which

chronic invalidism so often brings in its train,

the dam has changed its normal place. The

slightest fimctional exercise gives a distress

which the patient yields to and stops. In

such cases of "habit-neurosis'* a new range of

power often comes in consequence of the

"bullying-treatment," of efforts which the

doctor obliges the patient, much against his

will, to make. First comes the very extremity

of distress, then follows unexpected relief.

There seems no doubt that we are each and all » /

of us to some extent victims of habit-neurosis. •

We have to admit the wider potential range

and the habitually narrow actual use. We

239

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Kve subject to arrest by degrees of fatigue
which we have come only from habit to obey.
Most of us may learn to push the barrier
farther oflF, and to Uve in perfect comfort on
much higher levels of power.

Country people and city people, as a class,
illustrate this diflFerence. ' The rapid rate of
life, the number of decisions in an hour, the
many things to keep account of, in a busy
city man's or woman's life, seem monstrous
to a country brother. He does n't see how we
live at all. A day in New York or Chicago
fills him with terror. The danger and noise
make it appear like a permanent earthquake.
But settle him there, and in a year or two he
will have caught the pulse-beat. He will
vibrate to the city's rhythms; and if he only
succeeds in his avocation, whatever that may
be, he will find a joy in all the hurry and the
tension, he will keep the pace as well as any
of us, and get as much out of himself in any
week as he ever did in ten weeks in the
country.

The stimuli of those who successfully re-
240

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

spond and undergo the transformation here,
are duty, the example of others, and crowd-
pressure and contagion. The transformation,
moreover, is a chronic one: the new leyel of
energy becom^g, j)erm anent . The duties of
new oflSces of trust are constantly producing
this effect on the human beings appointed to
them. The physiologists call a stimulus
"dynamogenic'' when it increases the muscu-
lar contractions of men to whom it is applied;
but appeals can be dynamogenic morally as
well as muscularly. ^We are witnessing here
in America ' to-day the dynamogenic eflFect
of a very exalted political oflSce iipon the
energies of an individual who had already
manifested a healthy amount of energy before
the oflSce came.

Humbler examples show perhaps still better
what chronic eflFects duty's appeal may pro-
duce in chosen individuals. John Stuart Mill
somewhere says that women excel men in the
power of keeping up sustained moral excite-
ment. Every case of illness nursed by wife

or mothet is a proof of this; and where can

241

C^t^

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

one find greater examples of sustained en-
durance than in those thousands of poor
homes, where the woman successfully holds
the family together and keeps it going by
taking all the thought and doing all the work
-nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sew-
ing, scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors,
"choring" outside — where does the cata-
logue end? If she does a bit of scolding now
and then who can blame her? But often she
does just the reverse; keeping the children
clean and the man good tempered, and sooth-
ing and smoothing the whole neighborhood
into finer shape.

Eighty years ago a certain. Monty on left to
the Academic Frangaise a sum of money to
be given in small prizes, to the best examples
of "virtue"' of the year. The academy's
committees, with great good sense, have
shown a partiality to virtues simple and
chronic, rather than to her spasmodic and
dramatic flights; and the exemplary house-
wives reported on have been wonderful and

admirable enough. In Paul Bourget's report

242

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

for this year we find numerous cases, of which
this is a type; Jeanne Chai^, eldest of six_
children; mother insane, father chronically
ill. Jeanne, with no money but her wages at
a pasteboard-box factory, directs the house-
hold, brings up the children, and successfully
maintains the family of eight, which thus
subsists, morally as well as materially, by j
the sole force of her valiant will. In some of-
these French cases charity to outsiders is
added to the inner family burden; or helpless
relatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the
strength were inexhaustible and ample for
every appeal. Details are too long to quote
here; but human nature, responding to the
call of duty, appears nowhere sublimer than
in the person of these humble heroines of
family life.

Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs
of human nature's reserves of power, we find
that{^e stimuli that carry us over the usually
eflFective dam are most often the classic emo- p,
tional/ones, love, anger, crowd-contagion or ^

despair./ Despair lames most people, but it
' ' "243

14 vif «

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

wakes others fully up. Every siege or ship-
wreck or polar expedition brings out some
hero who keeps the whole company in heart.
Last year there was a terrible colliery explo-
sion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred
corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed.
After twenty days of excavation, the rescuers
heard a voice. ^'Me void,^' said the first
man unearthed. He proved to be a collier
named Nemy, who had taken command of
thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined
them and cheered them, and brought them
out alive. Hardly any of them could see or
speak or walk when brought into the day.
Five days later, a diflFerent type of vital en-
durance was unexpectedly unburied in the
person of one Berton who, isolated from any
but dead companions, had been able to sleep
away most of his time.
rA new position of responsibility will usually
stow a man to be a far stronger creature than
was supposed. Cromwell's and Grant's ca-
reers are the stock examples of how war will

wake a man up. I owe to Professor C. E.

.244

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

Norton, my colleague, the permission to
print part of a private letter from Colonel
Baird-Smith written shortly after the six
weeks' siege of Delhi, in 185ZJ for the vic-
torious issue of which that excellent oflScer
was chiefly to be thanked. He writes as
follows:

"... My poor wife had some reason to
think that war and disease between them had
left very little of a husband to take under
nursing when she got him again. An attack
of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth with
sores, shaken every joint in my body, and
covered me all over with sores and livid spots,
so that I was marvellously uiJovely to look
upon. A smart knock on the ankle-joint
from the splinter of a shell that burst in my
face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a wound,
had been of necessity neglected under the
pressing and incessant calls upon me, and had
p-own worse and worse till the whole foot
Mfow the ankle became a black mass and
seemed to threaten mortification. I insisted,

however, on being allowed to use it till the

245

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

place was taken, mortification or no; and
though the pain was sometimes horrible, I
carried my point and kept up to the last. On
the day after the assault I had an unlucky
fall on some bad ground, and it was an open
question for a day or two whether I had n't
broken my arm at the elbow. Fortunately
it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but
I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me.
b crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I
worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea,
and consumed as much opium as would have
done credit to my father-in-law [Thomas De
l^ Quincey] . However, thank God, I have a good
^ share of Tapleyism in me and come out
strong under diflSculties.\ I think I may con-
fidently say that no man ever saw me out
of heart, or ever heard one croaking word
from me even when our prospects were gloom-
iest. } We were sadly scourged by the cholera^
and it was almost appalling to me to fina
that out of twenty-seven oflScers presdK
I could only muster fifteen for the operations

of the attack. However, it was done, and

V246;

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

after it was done came the collapse. Don't
be horrified when I tell you that for the whole
of the actual siege, and in truth for some little
time before, I almost lived on brandy. Appe-
tite for food I had none, but I forced myself
to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had
an incessant craving for brandy as the strong-
est stimulant I could get. Strange to say, I
was quite unconscious of its aflFecting me in
the slightest degree. The excitement of the
work was so great that no lesser one seemed to
have any chance against it, and I certainly
neper found my intellect clearer or my nerves ^
^stronger in my life. \ It was *only my wretched
\ body that was weak, and the moment the
■I real work was done by our becoming complete
^^H masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay
^B and discovered that if I wished to live I must
^ continue no longer the system that had kept
^me Up until the crisis was passed. With it
^)assed away as if in a moment all desire to
^pbiulate, and a perfect loathing of my late
staflF of life took possession of me.*'

Such experiences show how profound is the
247

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

alteration in the manner in which, under
excitement, our organism will sometimes per-
form its physiological work. The processes
of repair become diflFerent when the reserves
have to be used, and for weeks and months
the deeper use may go on.

Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the
normal machinery bare. In the first number
of Dr. Morton Prince's Journal of Abnormal
Psychology, Dr. Janet has discussed five cases
of morbid impulse, with an explanation that
is precious for my present point of view. One
is a girl who eats, eats, eats, all day. Another
walks, walks, walks^ and gets her food from
an automobile that escorts her. Another is
a dipsomaniac. A fourth pulls out her hair.
A fifth wounds her flesh and burns her skin.
Hitherto such freaks of impulse have received
Greek names (as bulimia, dromomania, etc.)
and been scientifically disposed of as "episo-j
die syndromata of hereditary degeneration.'^
But it turns out that Janet's cases are '01^
what he calls psychasthenics, or victims of a

chronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy*

248

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

fatigue, insuflSciency, impossibility, unreality
and powerlessness of will; and that in each
and all of them the particular activity pur-
sued, deleterious though it be, has the tem-
porary result of raising the sense of vitality
and making the patient feel alive again. These
things reanimate: they would reaitbnate us^
but it happens that in each patient the
particular freak-activity chosen is the only
thing that does reanimate; and therein lies
the morbid state. The way to treat such
persons is to discover to them more usual
and useful ways of throwing their stores of
vital energy into gear.

Colonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on
altogether extraordinary stores of energy,
found that brandy and opium were ways of
throwing them into gear.

Such cases are humanly typical. We are
all to some degree oppressed, imfree. We
don't come to our own. It is there, but we
don't get at it. The threshold must be made
to shift. Then many of us find that an ec-
centric activity — a "spree,*' say — relieves.

hi CU\

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

There is no doubt that to some men sprees
and excesses of almost any kind are medicinal,
temporarily at any rate, in spite of what the
moralists and doctors say.

But when the normal tasks and stimulations
of life don't put a man's deeper levels of
energy on tap, and he requires distinctly dele-
terious excitements, his constitution verges
on the abnormal. The normal opener of

/deep er and deeper levels of e nergy is the will. \
oTne diflSculty is to use it, to make the eflFort

'which the word volition implies. But if we

do make it (or if a god, though he were only

the god Chance, makes it through us), it

will act dynamogenically on us for a month.

It is notprious that a single successful eflFort

of moral volition, such as saying "no'' to some

habitual temptation, or performing some

courageous act, will launch a man on a higher

level of energy for days and weeks, will give

him a new range of power. "In the act of

uncorking the whiskey bottle which I had

brought home to get drunk upon," said a

man to me, "I suddenly found myself running

250

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

out into the garden, where I smashed it on
.the ground. I felt so happy and uplifted
after this act, that for two months I was n't
tempted to touch a drop/"
(The emotions and excitements due to usual ^ ,

y — . . . ' ^ X

situations are the oisual inciters of the will./
But these act discontinuously; and in the
intervals the shallower levels of life tend to
close in and shut us ofl^ Accordingly the best
practical knowers of the human soul have
invented the thing known as methodical
ascetic discipline to keep the deeper levels
constantly in reach. Beginning with easy
tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising
<lay by day, it is, I believe, admitted that
disciples of asceticism can reach very high »
levels of freedom and power of will.

Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must
have produced this result in innumerable dev-
otees. But the most venerable ascetic
system, and the one whose results have the
most voluminous experimental corroboration
is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan.

From time immemorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever cod^^f
practice it might be, Hindu aspirants to ^^^
fection have trained themselves, month in
and out, for years. The result claimed, and
certainly in many cases accorded by impartial
judges, is strength of character, personal
power, unshakability of soul. In an article
in the Philosophical Review,^ from which I am
largely copying here, I have quoted at great
length the experience with "Hatha Yoga'*
of a very gifted European friend of mine who,
by persistently carrying out for several months
its methods of fasting from food and sleep,
its exercises in breathing and thought-con-
centration, and its fantastic posture-gynmas-
tics, seems to have succeeded in waking up
deeper and deeper levels of will and moral
and intellectual power in himself, and to have
escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-
condition of the "circular*' type, from which
he had suffered for years.

Judging by my friend's letters, of which the

^ " The Energies of Men." Philosophical Review,
vol. XVI, No.l, January, 1907. [Cf . Note on p. 229.]

252

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

last I have is written fourteen months after
the Yoga training began^ there can be no
doubt of his relative regeneration. He has
undergone material trials with indiflFerence,
travelled third-class on Mediterranean steam-
ers, and fourth-class on African trains, living
\i^ith the poorest Arabs and sharing their
Unaccustomed food, all with equanimity.
His devotion to certain interests has been
put to heavy strain, and nothing is more
remarkable to me than the changed moral
ttfne with which he reports the situation. A
profound modification has unquestionably
o xjurred in the running of his mental machin-
ery. The gearing has changed, and his will is
available otherwise than it was.
, My friend is a man of very peculiar tempera-
ment. Few of us would have had the will to
start upon the Yoga training, which, once
started, seemed to conjure the further will-
power needed out of itself. And not all of
those who could launch themselves would
have reached the same results. The Hindus

themselves admit that in some men the re-

S58

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

suits may come without call or bdl. My
friend writes to me: "You are quite right in
thinking that religious crises, love-crises, in-
dignation-crises may awaken in a very short
time powers similar to those reached by
years of patient Yoga-practice."

Probably most medical men would tre^t
this individuaFs case as one of what it is
fashionable now to call by the name of "self-
suggestion," or "expectant attention" — as
if those phrases were explanatory, or meant
more than the fact that certain men can iBe
influenced, while others cannot be influenced,
by certain sorts of ideas. This leads me to
say a word about ideas considered as dyna-
mogenic agents, or stimuli for unlocking what
would otherwise be unused reservoirs of in-
dividual power.

One thing that ideas do is to contradict

other ideas and keep us from believing them.

An idea that thus negates a first idea may

itself in turn be negated by a third idea, and

the first idea may thus regain its natural

influence over our belief and determine our

254

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

behavior. Our philosophic and religious de-
velopment proceeds thus by credulities, nega-
tions, and the negating of negations.

But whether for arousing or for stopping
belief, ideas may fail to be eflScacious, just as
a wire ,at one time alive with electricity, may
at another time be dead. Here our insight
into causes fails us, and we can only note
results in general terms. Cui general, whether
a given idea shall be a live idea depends more
on the person into whose mind it is injected
than on the idea itself. Which is the sugges-
tive idea for this person, and which for that
onej [Mr. Fletcher's disciples regenerate them
selves by the idea (and the fact) that they are
chewing, and re-chewing, and super-chewing
their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate
themselves by going without thei^preakf ast —
a fact, but also an ascetic ideaP Not every
one can use these ideas with the same success.

But apart from such individually varying
susceptibilities, there are common lines along
which men simply as men tend to be in-
flammable by ideas. As certain objects nat-

955

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

urally awaken love, anger, or cupidity, so
^ / /certain ideas naturally awaken the energies
oiE loyalty, courage, endurance, or devotioi^
When these ideas are effective in an indi-
vidual's life, their effect is often very great
indeed. They may transfigure it, unlocking
innumerable powers which, but for the idea,
would never have come into play. "Father-
land," "the Flag," "the Union," "Holy
Church," "the Monroe Doctrine," "Truth,"
"Science," "Liberty," Garibaldi's phrase,
"Rome or Death," etc., are so many examples
of energy-releasing ideas. The social nature
of such phrases is an essential factor of their
dynamic power. They are forces of detent
in situations in which no other force produces
equivalent effects, and each is a force of de-
tent only i Ai specific group of men.
/The menWry that an oath or vow has been
made will nerve one to abstinences and efforts
otherwise impossiWfe; witness the "pledge"
in the history of the temperance movement.
A mere promise to his sweetheart will clean

up a youth's life all over — at any rate for a

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

time. For such eflFects an educated sus-
ceptibility is required. The idea of one's
"honor/' for example, unlocks energy only
in those of us who have had the education of
a "gentleman/' so called.

That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-
Muskau, writes to his wife from England that
he has invented "a sort of artificial resolu-
tion respecting things that are diflScult of
performance. My device," he continues,
"is this: / give my word of honor most solemnly
to myself to do or to leave undone this or
that. I am of course extremely cautious in
the use of this expedient, but when once the
word is given, even though I afterwards think
I have been precipitate or mistaken, I hold
it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever incon-
veniences I foresee likely to res^^^ If I were
capable of brea kinmiy wor Afll such ma-
ture consideration, 1 should lose all respect
for myself, — and what man of sense would
not prefer death to such an alternative? . . .
When the mysterious formula is pronounced,

no alteration in my own view, nothing short

257

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

of physical impossibilities, must, for the wel-
fare of my soul, alter my will. ... I find
something very satisfactory in the thought
that man has the power of framing such props
and weapons out of the most trivial mate-
rials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the
force of his will, which thereby truly deserves
the name of onmipotent.'' ^
Conversions^ whether they be political, scien-
\ tific, philosophic, or religious, form another
way in which bound energies are let looseJ>
They imify us, and put a stop to ancient
mental interferences. The result is freedom,
and often a great enlargement of power. A
belief that thus settles upon an individual
always acts as a challenge to his will. But,
for the particular challenge to operate, he
must be J|^ jight challeng^e. In rdigious
conversiol^WAhave so fine an adjustment
that the idea may be in the mind of the chal-
lengee for years before it exerts effects; and
why it should do so then is often so far from

^ " Tour in England, Ireland, and France/' Phila-
ddphia, 1839, p. 4S5.

S58

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

obvious that the event is taken for a miracle
of grace, and not a natural occurrence. What-
ever it is, it may be a highwater mark of
energy, in which "noes,*" once impossible,
are easy, and in which a new range of "yeses'*
gains the right of way.

We are just now witnessing a very copious
unlocking of energies by ideas in the persons
erf those converts to "New Thought,'' "Chris-
tian Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or
other forms of spiritual philosophy, who are
so numerous among us to-day. The ideas
here are healthy-minded and optimistic; and
it is quite obvious that a wave of religious
activity, analogous in some respects to the
spread of early Christianity, Buddhism, and
Mohammedanism, is passing over our Amer-
ican world. The common f^^K of these
optimistic faiths is that thej^^HInd to the
suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher
calls "fearthought." Fearthought he defines
as the "self-suggestion of inferiority"; so
that one may say that these systems all

operate by the suggestion of power. And

S59

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the power, small or great, comes in various
shapes to the mdividual, — power, as he
will tell you, not to "mind** things that used
to vex him, power to concentrate his mind,
good cheer, good temper — in short, to put
it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone.

Tlie most genuinely saintly person I have
ever known is a friend of mine now suffering
from cancer of the breast — I hope that she
may pardon my citing her here as an example
of what ideas can do. Her ideas have kept
her a practically well woman for months
after she should have given up and gone to
bed. They have annulled all pain and weak-
ness and given her a cheerful active life,
unusually beneficent to others to whom she
has afforded help. Her doctors, acquiescing
in results^^^V could not understand, have
had the go^^Bse to let her go her own way.

How fax the mind-cure movement is des-
tined to extend its influence, or what inte^
lectual modifications it may yet undergo, no
one can forete^. It is essentially a religious

movement, and to academically nurtured

260

THE ENERGIES OF MEN

minds its utterances are tasteless and often
grotesque enough. It also incurs the natural
enmity of medical politicians, and of the whole
trades-union wing of that profession. But
no unprejudiced observer can fail to recog-
nize its importance as a social phenomenon
to-day, and the higher medical minds are
already trying to interpret it fairly, and make
its power available for their own therapeutic
ends.

Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West
Riding Asylum in England, said last year to
the British Medical Association that the best
sleep-producing agent which his practice had
revealed to him, was prayer. I say this, he
added (I am sorry here that I must quote
from memory), purely as a medical man. The
exercise of prayer, in those ^^wiabitually
exert it, must be regarded l^j^^lBoctors as
the most adequate and normal of all the paci-
fiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.

But in few of us are functions not tied up

by the exercise of other functions. Relatively

few medical men and scientific men, I fancy,

261

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

can pray. Few can cany on any Uving com-
merce with "God." Yet many of us are well
aware of how much freer and abler our lives
would be, were such important forms of ener-
gizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere
in which we hav^ been reared.! There are in
every one potential forms of activity that
actually are shunted out from use. Part of
the imperfect vitality under which we labor
can thus be easily explained. One part of
our mind dams up — even damns up! — the
other parts.

Conscience makes cowards of us all. Social
conventions prevent us from telling the truth
after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of
Bernard Shaw. We all know persons who are
models of excellence, but who belong to the
extreme l^flBhie type of mind. So deadly
is their i^^Ktual respectability that we
can't converse about certain subjects at all,
can't let our our minds play over them, can't
even mention them in their presence. I
have numbered among my dearest friends
persons thus inhibited intellectually, with

THE ENERGIES OP MEN

whom I would gladly have been able to talk
freely about certain interests of mine, certain
authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton,
Edward Carpenter, H. G. Wells, but it
would n't do, it made them too uncomf ort^
able, they would n't play, I had to be silent.
An intellect thus tied down by literality and
decorum makes on one the same sort of an
impression that an able-bodied man would
who should habituate himself to do his work
with only one of his fingers, locking up the
rest of his organism and leaving it unused.

I trust that by this time I have said enough
to convince the reader both of the truth and
of the importance of my thesis. The two ques-
tions, first, thi^of the possible extent of our \^
pow^s; and, second^ that of the various
avenues jof_ approach to thenjBtiie various ^
keys for unlocking them in divi|||^Kndividuals,
dominate the whole problem of individual
and national education. We need a topo-
graphy of the limits of human power, similar
to the chart which oculists use of the field of
human vision. We need also a study of the

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

various types of human being with reference
to the different ways in which their energy-
reserves » may be appealed to and set loose.
Biographies and individual experiences of
every kind may be drawn upon for evidence
here. ^

* " This would be an absolutely concrete study . . .
The limits of power must be limits that have been real-
ized in actual persons, and the various ways of unlock-
ing the reserves of power must have been exemplified in
individual lives ... So here is a program of concrete in-
dividual psychology ... It is replete with interesting
facts, and points to practical issues superior in impor-
tance to anything we know." F%m the address as
originally delivered before the Philosopl^al Association;
See xvi. Philosophical Review^ 1, 19.

THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

XI
THE MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR»

k
V The war against war is going to be no holiday

excursion or camping party. The military feel-
ings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their
place among our ideals until better substitutes
are offered than the glory and shame that come
to nations, as well as to mdividuals from the
ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes
of trade. There is something highly para-
doxical in the modem man's relation to war.*
Ask all our millions, north and south, whether
they would vote now (were such a thing possi-
ble) to have our war for the Union expunged
from history, and the record of a peaceful tran-
sition to the present time substituted for that
of its marches and battles, and probably hardly
a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those

^ Written for and first published by the Association
for Int^national Conciliation (Leaflet No. 27) and
also published in McClure*8 Magasdne^ August, 1910»
and The Popular Science Monthly^ October, 1910.

867

:^v^ '.

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

ancestors, those efforts^ those memories and
legends, are the most ideahpart of what we now
own together, a sacred spiritual po ssession
worth more than all the blood poured out.
Yet ask those same people whether they would
be willing in cold blood to start another civil
war now to gain another similar possession,
T and not one man or women would vote for the
proposition. In modern eyes, precious though
wars may be, they mustjiot^ waged solely
for the sake of the idealharvest. /Only when
forced upon one, only when Nan enemy's in-/
justice leaves us no alternative^'is a war now^
thought permissibly 'a.vCo-^^^^

jQd[t_was not thus in ancient time^ The
earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a
neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the vil-
lage and possess the females, was the most
profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of
living. Thus were the more martial tribes
selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure
pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle
with the more fundamental appetite for
plunder.

268

seen. r

T hose wars were purely p gatical. Pride.
£69

MORAL EQUIVALENT OP WAR
\j^ I Modem war is so «^«isive that we feel

jlZl^'^^Jj^ ^*^ ^ hAtt/>r aYf""ft \f> phlTidCT; but

modem ma n inheritdf all the innatepugnaci^
\ an d all the love of ^ry of his ancestors
Showing war's irr^ionality a nd horror is of^
n o effect^upon him «^ The^ horrors make the
fascination. War is the strong life ; it is life
in extremis; war-taxes a re the only ones me n
never, hesita t e to pay, as the budgets of all
na^ons show us. ^ y

History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one
long recital of how Diomedes and Ajax, Sar-
pedon and Hector hilled. No detail of the
wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek
mind fed upon the story. Greek history is a
panorama of jingoism and imperialism — war
Vfor war's sake, all'tEe citizens being warriors.

It is horrible reading, because of the irration- ^

ality of it all — save for the purpose of making
"history" — and the history is that of the
utter ruin of a civilization in intellectual re-
spects perhaps thejiighest tfe^arth has ever

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

gold, wo men, slaves, excitemeiiL -were their^
, only motives. I n the Peloponnesian war for
example, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of
Melos (the island where the "Venus of Milo''
was found), hitherto neutral, to own their
lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate
which Thucydides gives in full, and which, for
sweet reasonableness of fom^ would have sat-
isfied Matthew Arnold. " ^||he ^owerf ul exa ct
V what t hey can,'^ said the AthenianSjJVand-^he

, . weak grantwnatthey must." When the Me-
leans say that sooner than be slaves they will
appeal io the gods, the Athenians reply: "Of
the gods we believe and of men we know that,
by a law of their natiire, wherever they can
rule they will. This lamwasnot made by us,
and we are not the first tojjave acted upon it;
we did but inherit it, and we know that you
and all. mankind, if you were |i|^ strong as we
are, would do as we do. So mucHsfor the gods ;
we have told you why we expect to stand as
high in their good opinion as you." Well, the
Meleans still refused, and their town was

taken. "The Athenians," Thucydides quietly

270

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

says, "thereupon put to death all who were of
military age and made slaves of the women
and children. They then colonized the island,
sending thither five hundred settlers of their

/'Z

Alexander's career was piracy pure an d <^ /
simple, nothing but an nygy nf p ower ftnd plun-
Am', m ade romantic by the chatacter of the
fiero. TEiCTew as no rational principle in it,
and the moment he died his generals and
gov ^ors attacked one another. Thecruj^ty

of ^os e tim es is incredible. When Rome *^

«■ ■ — ^ — -

finally conquered Greece, Paulus ^milius, was
told by the Roman Senate to reward his sol-
diers for their toil by "giving" them the old
kingdom of Epirus. They sacked seventy
cities and carried off a hundred and fifty thou-
sand inhabitants as slaves. How many they
killed I know not; but in Etolia they killed
all the senators, five hundred and fifty in
niunber. Brutus was ^^the noblest Roman
of them all," but to reanimate his soldiers
on the eve of Philippi he similarly pnmiises

to ^ve thfim the . cities . gt Scfrrt;^ . ^nd ^
' • «7l

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Thessalonica to ravage, ii ik^_ynn the
fight.

Such was the gory nurse that trained socie-
ties to c ^esiveness. We inherit the wariike
type; and for most df the capacities of heroism
that the human race Is full of we have to thank
this cruel history. ypM men tell no tales,
and if there were any tribes of other type than
this they have left no survivors. ^UuLSpces-
tors have bred pugnacitv into our bone and
marrow, and tho usands^Vears of peac e won ^
breed Jt out of u^ The popular imagina^on
J fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let
public opini on once reac h a certain fighting
« / pitch, and no ruler can withs tand it. In the
Boer war both governments began with bluff
but could n't stay there, the military tension
was too much for them. In 1898 our people
I had read the word "war'' in letters three
) inches high for three months in every news-
I paper. The pliant politician McKinley was
i swept away by their eagerness, and our squalid
war with Spain became a necessity.

At the present day, civilized opinion is i

272 ♦

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

curious mental mixture. The military in- .^C^
stinets and ideals are as strong as ever, but are
confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely
curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable
writers are showing up the bestial side of
military service. (j Pure loot and mastery seern^ nI

no longer mo ral ly avowable m ot ives, an d ^
pretexts must be found for attributing th em ^>

sole ly to the ene^ ^^ England and we, our
army and navy autlibrities repeat without
ceasing, arm solely for/" peace," Germanv
and Japan it is who are bent on loot and glory.
Peace'' in military mou Afes^ to-day is ,a
s ynonym ioT ^^war exp ected^ The word has
Ibecome a pure provocative, and no government
wishing peace sincerely should allow it ever
to be printed in a newspaper. Every up-to-

date dictionary should say that peace" and
"war" mean the same thing, now in posse;
now in actu. It may even reasonably be said

that 4t^ intensely sharp competitive pr^gSbf}*
ration for war by the nations ri iftff real <» ^^^ ^
permanent, unceasing; and, that the battles
are only a sort of public verification o f

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

tlie mastery gained during^ the ** peace ^^-
interval.
It.isplainthat on this subject civilized man I

* has developed a sort of double personality. (
If we take European nations, no legitimate
interest of any one of them would seem to
justify the tremendous destructions which a
war to compass it would necessarily entail.
It would seem as though conunon sense and
•reason ought to find a way to reach agreement
,in every conflict of honest interests. I my-
self think it our bounden duty to believe in

SOsuch international rationality as possible. But,
as things stand, I see how desperately hard it
is to bring the peace-party and the war-party

% together, and I believe that the diflSculty is
due to certain deficiencies in the program of

: pacificism which set the militarist imagination

strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably,

against it. In the whole discussion both: sides
V
^are on imagjngtiye an d senti mental ground.

It is but one Utopia against another^ and

everything one says must be abstract and

hypothetical. Subject to this criticism

274 . m^-'

-p

MORAL EQUIVALENT OP WAR

and caution, I will try to characterize in
abstract strokes the opposite imaginative
forces, and point out what to my own very
fallible mind seems the best Utopian hypothe-
sis, the most promising line of conciliation.

In my remarks, pacificist though I am, I will ^
refuse to speak of the bestial side of the war- T^r

rSgime (already done justice to by many writ-
ers) and consider only the higher aspects of y
militaristic sentiment, patriotism no one ^
thinks discreditable; nor does any one deny
that war is the romance of history. But inor- / j^^
di nate ambitio nsMc tEelSoui of every<4 iatriot-
ism, a nd the possibility of violent death the
soul of all roman^ > The militarily patriotic
and romantic-minded everywhere, aad espe-
cially the professional military class, /refu se
to admit for a inoment that war jnayj^e a {J)
transitory phenomenon ^n social evolutiojZ^
The notion of a sheep's paradise like that re-
volts, they say, our higher imagination. Where
then would be the steeps of lifeP^If war had
ever stopped, we should have to re-invent it, on

this view, to redeem life from flat degeneration.

£75

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

^jcflective apologists for war at the present
X/ day all take itTeligiously. Vlt is a sort of sac-
rament^^ts profits are to the vanquished as
well as to the victor; and quite apart from
any question of profit, it is an absolute good,
• we are told, for it is human nature at its high-
est dynamic. Its "horrors'" are a cheap
price to pay for rescue from the only alterna-
tive supposed, of a worid of clerks and teach-
ers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of "con-
sumer's leagues '' and "associated charities/*
of industrialism imlimited, and femininism
unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor
any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a
planet!

So fan as the central essence of this feeling
goes, no healthy minded person, it seems to me,
can help to some degree partaking of it. (Mili-

tarism j sjhg^ great preserver of our ideals of
hardi hood, a n d human life with no use for
1/ j iardihood would je contemptible. ^ Without
risks or prizes for the darer, history would
be insipid indeed; and there is a type of mili-
tary character which every one feels that

276

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

the race^ should never cease to breed, for
every one is sensitive to its superiorityi . j
The duty is incumbent on mankind, of \
keeping military characters in stock — \
of keeping them, if not for use, then as ends n/
in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection,
— so that Roosevelt's wea klings and molly- '7^g5f
coddles may not end by making every- p ^^'^A.-^
thing else disappear from the face oia>f
nature. k^'^fi

This ^tural sort of feeling forms, I think, ^^J
the innermost soul of army-writings. ^^ithoulL -p*^^^' ^ ^
any Exception known to me, milita rist BM^ff ^'^
thors take a highly mystical view of thei^ S<^
y/Subject, and regard war as a biological or sq - • L^
; cio lofflcal necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary ^ ;.
psychological checks and motivep MVhen th
time of development is ripe the war must come,
reason or no reason, for the jdstificationi
pleaded are invariably fictitious. H Var is, in
sho rt, a pCTmanent human obligation. General
Homer Lea, in his recent book "The Valor ol
Ignorance," plants himself squarely on this \,y

groimd. Rea dines s for war is for him ,n^

«77

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the essence of n fttmna.lity ^ and ability in

it the supreme measure of the health of

nations.

-/Nations, General Lea j§g§,riire never stA;

tionary — they must necessarily expand or
shrink, according to their vitality or decrepi-
tude. Jf^an now is culminating; and by -the
fatal law in question it is impossible that her
statesmen should not long since have entered,
with extraordinary foresight, upon a vast pol-
icy of conquest — the^ame in which the first
moves were her wars with China and Russia
and her treaty with England, and pf which the

^(^ final objective is the capture of the Philip-

pines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and the
• ^"^-^ whole of our Coast west of the Sierra Passes.

^ V This will give Japan what her ineluctable
vocation as a state absolutely forces her to
claim, the possession of the entire Pacific
\ Ocean; and to oppose these deep designs we

Americans have, according to our author,
i^othing but our conceit, our ignorance, our
commercialism, ourjoorruption, and our fem-
inism. General Lea makes a minute technical

278

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

>^ A

comparison of the military strength which we >
at present could oppose to the strength of j
Japan, and concludes that the islands,, Alaska,
Oregon, and Southern California, would fall
almost without resistance, that San Francisco'
must surrender in a fortnight to a Japanese in-
vestment, that in three or four months the
war would be over, and our republic, unable to
regain what it had heedlessly neglected to
proted^ suflScientl^, would then "disintegrate,"
imtil p^aps some Csesar should arise to weld
us again into si nation.

A dismal/forecast indeed! Yet not im-
plausible, ji the mentality of Japan's states-
men be of the Caesarian type of which histofry
shows sd many examples, and which is aljyflfet^
General Lea seems able to imagin|^Hpt^
there is no reason to think that w^nBFfean
o longer bg the mothers of Napoleonic or
Alexandrian characters; and ii these come in\
Japan and find their oppo||kmity, just such]
surprises as '^TEe Valor of Ignorance " paints j
may lurk in ambush for us. Ignorant as we

still are of the inncfrmost recesses of Japanese

«T9

MEMORIES ANP STUDIES

mentality, we may be foolhardy to disregard
such possibilities.

Other militarists are more complex and more
moral in their considerations. The "P^Hqsb — -
ophie des Krieges," by S. R. Steinmetz is a
good example, v^ TY gr, accor ding to this author,
is an ordeal instituted by God, wh oweighs the
jpatioT^g; in its |;^alfl.nr*ft. It is the essentiafTorm
of the State, and the only function in which
peoples can employ all their powers at once /
and convergently. No Victory is possible save
as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no de-
feat for which some vice or weakness is not
responsible. Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity,
heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness,
economy, wealth, physical health and vigor —
(\ it^j^j§j ^t a moral ^ intellectual point of su-
pertHlly that does n't tell, when God holds his
assizes and hurls the peoples upon one an-
other. Die WeUgeschichte ist das Weltgericht;
and Dr. SteinnKtz does not believe that in
H^ the long run chance and luck play any part
in apportioning the issues.

The virtues that prevail, it must be noted,
280

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

/(tt the hrs\

are virtues anyhow, superiorities that count m\
peaceful as well as in military competition;
but the strain on them, being infinitely in-
tenser in the latter case, makes war infinitely
more searching as a trial. No ordeal is com-
parable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer^^^^' '^^
is the welder of men into cohesive states, anq ^^ tt^
nowhere but in such states can human natur^-<^%^
adequately develop its cagaeity. The onlyj >^ - "|^.
alternative is "degeneration, /l^' ^ ' , ^ '

D r. Stei pmetaKis'^a conscientious thinker, (^\3]^^^^
and his book, short as it is, takes much into ^V-^'-^VaI^
account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be ^'A>-\vm-.oI\
summed up in Simon Patten's word, that man-
kind^i^agomrsed in pain jjod jear, and that th e

transition to %, pleasure-economy " may be

■- ^ ' — ■ — - — -

fatal to a being wielding no powers of defence
against its disintegrative influences. /^U wc
speak of th t. Je ar of emancipation from thi^^
ear-regiv wy we p^ the whole situation into
single phrase; fefr regarding oursel ves now\^y .^ j|^
taking the pla<^ of the ancient fear of the
enemy.

Turn the f^: over as I will in my mind, it
281

■X'-

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

lall seems to lead back to two unwillingnes aes
■of t he imagina tion, one aesthetic, and the
I [other moral; uniinllingness, first to envisage
a future i n which anny^life^l^ittL its many ele-
ments of charm, shall be forever impossible^,
[and in which the destinie s of peoples s hall
[nevermore be decided quickly, thrillingly, and
ragically, by force, .but only gradually_ and
insipidly by "evolutio nal and, secondly, jm -
wi Umgness to see the supreme theatre of h u-
|na n strenuousn ess^c bsea^^^ tnd the splendid
Silitaryap titudes of m en doom ed to k eep
always in a s tate of latency and never sho w
V it hemselves in^ actio n. These insistent un-
llingnesses, no less than other aesthetic and .
^thical insistencies, have, it seems to me, to .
listened to aasf'respected. O ne cannot,
meet them eflfectively by mere^ co unterTi psist-
ency on war's expe nsiven^s ^^ horro r. The
horror makes the^jthoill; ^^ when the ques-
tion is of getting the,^iei?^®*"<«J supreffiest
out of human nature, talk ^^xpensejounds
ignominious. Tne weakn^s of so much
merely negative criticism is evident — pacifi- .

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

cism makes no converts from the military
party, fcfe^ milit aryj mrty denies neither the
besti ality nor the h orror, nor the expens e;
|t only says that these things tell but half
fthe story. It pnly says that war is worth^ &B£t%
^ Ihgt/ta^ ^ human nature as a who le, its wars
are its best prot ection against its weaker and

more cowardl y self, and that ma nkind cannoty / ^.

Hfford to ado pt a peace"economy r]]>

Pacificists ought to enter more deeply into ^^^^2 -i
the aesthetical and ethical point of view of '

their opponents. Do that first in any contro-
versy, says J. ^Chapman, then move the point,
and your opponent will f ollow./po l ong as anti-
militarists propose, no substitute for w ar^s
disciplmary function, no m^al equivalent_cd (J
w ar^ analogous. a& one might say, to the me- jjV

chanical equi valent of h eat, so long they fail > ,
t o realize the full i n yrardness oT t he situati on^ \l/<
And as a rule they do fail.VThe duties, pen- ^
alties, and sanctions pic tured in the Ut opias
they paint are all too weak and tame to touch
the military-minded. Tolstoi's pacificism is
the only exception to ±his rule, for it is pro-

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

*t-4 foundly pessimistic as regards all this world's
values, and makesjthefeaj of the Lord furnish
the moral spur provided elsewhere by the fear
of the enemy. But our socialistic peace-advo-
cates all believe absolutely in this world's
values; and instead of the fear of the Lord
and the fear of the enemy, the only fear they
reckon with is the feaiL o f poverty if one be
lazy. TMs Weakness pervades all the social-
istic literature with which I am acquainted.
Even in Lowes Dickinson's exquisite dialogue,*
high wages and short hours are the only forces
invoked for overcoming man's distaste for
repulsive kinds of labor. Meanwhile men at
I^rge still liv^^s they always have lived,
4er a painiand^fearjecon^^^ — for those of
us who live in an ease-economy are but an
island in the stormy ocean — and the whole
atmosph ere of present-day Utopian literature
tastes mawkish and dishwatery to people who
still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors.
It suggest s, in truth , ubiquitousL inferiority.
Infe riority is always with us, and merciless

* "Justice and liberty," N. Y., 1909.
284

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

scorn cof_it^ is the keyn ote of the milita ry
temper. "Dogs, would you live forever?"
shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes/* say
our Utopians, "let us live forever, and raise
our level gradually.*' The best thing about
our "inferiors'* to-day is that they are as
tough as nails, and physically and morally
almost as insensitive. XJtopianism would see
them soft and squeamish, while militarism
would keep their c allou sness* but transfigure
it into a meritorious characteristic, needed by
"the service,"" and redeemed by that from the
suspicion of inferiority. All the qualities of
a man acquire dignity when he knows that
the service of the collectivity that owns him
needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his
own pride rise s in pr oportion. No collec-
tivity is like an army for nourishing such
^pnSe; but it has to be confessed that the
only sentiment which the image of pacific
C5>sm opolitan industrialism is capable of arous- /
ing in countless -worthy breasts is shame at the
idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It_

is obvious that the United St ates of Ameri ca

"^ 285 ~

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

as they exist to-day impre ss jt mind l ike Ge n-
eral Lea's as so much human blubber. Where
is the sharpness and precipitousness, the con-
tempt for life, whether one's own, or another's?
Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the
unconditional duty? Where is the conscrip-
tion? Where is *the blood-tax? Where is
anything that one feels honored by belonging
to?
nJ rf" I Having said thus much in preparation, I will
now confess my own utopi^u^T ^ devoutly be-
lieve in the reign of peace and in the gradual
advent of some, sort of a socialistic equi- .

librium^ The fatalistic view of the war-
function is to me nonsense, for I know that
war-making is due to definite motives and
subject to prudential icfi^ks l end rea sonable
criticisms, just like any other form of enter- j
ly^se. And when whole nations are the
armies, and the science of destruction vies
in intellectual refinement with the sciences
of production, I see that war Ijecomes absurd
and impossible from its own monstrosity.

Ext ravagant ambitions w illha veto b&jceg-

286

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

placed Ij g^reas gnable clagos^^ an d nations

n32],qt mf\]cPi onnriTTiOTi nftii.w^£gjiTstf^ I

see no reason why all this should not apply
to yellow ai^ well as to white countries, and I
look forward to a futiu-e when acts of war^^
shall be formally outlawed as between civil- j'
ized peoples. '

• All these beliefs of mine put me squarely
into the anti-militarist party. But I do not
believe that peace either ought to be or will
be permanent on this globe, unless the state
pacificall y orga nized preserve some of the ol
elements of anny-discipliney A permanently!
s uccessful peace-economy ca n not be a simple
pleasure-economy., J [ n the more or less social^ !
ist ic future towards which mankind seems
drifting we must still subject ourselves col-
lec tively to those severities which answer to our
real positionupon tliis only partly hospitablej
globe^ We must make new energies and hard-
ihoods continue the manliness to which the

milit ary mind so faithfully clings. Martial
virtues must be the enduring cement; intre-
pidity, contempt of softness, surrender of

«87

- .t

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

private interest, obedience to command, must
still remain the rock upon which states are
built — unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous
reactions against commonwealths fit only
for contempt, and liable to invite attack
whenever a centre of crystallization for mili-
tary-minded enterprise gets formed anywheMy
in their neighborhood.

The war-party is assuredly right in affirm-
ing and reaffirming that the martial virtues,
although originally g aine d by the race through
war, vare absolute and permanent human
'goods.VPatriotic pride and ambition in their
militaiy form are, after all, only specifica-
tions of a more general competitive passion. A
They are its first form, but that is no reason
for supposing them to be its last form. Men
now are proud of belonging to a conquering
nation, and without a munnvr they lay
down their persons and their wealth, if by so
doing they may fend off subjection. But
who can be sure that other aspects of one^s
country may not, with time and education X

and suggestion enoughTcome to be regarded |

£88

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

with similarly effective feelings of pride and
j5liamer\yWhy should men not some day feel
that it is worth a blood-tax to belong to a col- i
lectivity superior in any ideal respect? Whjr^
should they not blush with indignant shameji^
if the community that owns them is vilei ' %

in any way ^diatsoever? Individuals, daily
more numerous, now feel this civic passion.
It is only a question of blowing on the spa^y
till the whole population gets incandescent,
and on the ruins of the old mprals of mili-
tary honor, a stable system ^f morals of
civic honor builds itself up., What
whole community comes to believe in grasps
the individual as in a vise. J TEe*^ar-funcfion>
^as grasped us so f a r: bur constructive inter-
e sts may some day seem no le ss imperative,
and impose on the individua l a hardly lighter
burden.

Let me illustrate my idea more concretely.
There is nothing to make one indignant in
the mere fact that life is hard, that men should
toil and suffer pain. The planetary condi-
tions once for all are such, and we can stand it.

289

MEMORIES AND STUDIES ^

But that so many men, by mere accidents of
birth and opportunity, should have a life of

iothing else but toil and pain and hardness
nd inferiority imposed upon them, should
. lave no vac ation, while others natively no
nore deserving never get any taste of thi^
mmpaigning life at all, — this is capable
arousing indignation in reflective minds*
may end b y seeming shameful to all of ^^gg,^
that some of us have nothing but campaign- \
ing, andot hers nothing but unmanly ea sei
now — and this is my idea — there were.

instead of milit ary conscription a conscrip-

■ ■ ~' — a» — —

tion of the whole yo uthful population to
orm for a certain number of years a part of

he army enlis tgd against Njoiure^ the inju s-

tice would tend to be evened out^ and numer -

ous other goods to the com monw ealth would

iollow.^ The military ideals of hardihood and

discipline would be wrougt^into the growing

fibre of the people; no one would remain

blind as the luxurious classes now are blind,

to man's relationsAo the globe he lives on,

and to the permanently sour and hard f ounda-

£90

MORAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

tions of his higher life/^o coal and iron mine
to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December,
to dishwashing, clothes-washing, and window-
washing, to road-building and tunnel-making,
to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the
frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded
youths be drafted off, according to their]
choice, to get the childishness knockfid_.QU
of them, and to come Jbackjnto^ society with
healthier sympathies and soberer ideas.
They would have paid their blood-tax,
done their own part in the immemorial
human warfare against nature; they would
tread the earth more proudly, the women
would value them more highly, they would
be better fathers and teachers of the following
generation.
<Such a conscription, with the state of public

^^ — N il 111 '■ _ I, 2

opinion that would have reouir ed it, and the
many moral fruits it would bear, would pre-
serve in

§t of a pacific civilization Jh^

manly virtues which the jnilitaiX.E§jty is so

afra id o f seeing disappear in peace .. We

f ^^touWget toughness without callousness.

]■

'?'?

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

authority with as little cri minal cruelty a s
possible, and painful work done cheerily be-
cause the duty is temporary, and threatens
not, as no^ to degrad e the whole remainder
of one's lif e^ I spoke of the "moral equi-
valent" of war. XSo far, war has b een the only
force that can discibline a whole communis

and until an equivalent d iscipline is OTganized^
I believe that war must have its wa^ But

I have no serious doubt that the ordinary
prides and shames of social man, once devel-
oped to a certain intensity, are capable of
'organi zing such a mor a l equiv aknt as I have
gketched, or some other just as effective for
preserving manlin ess of type/ It is but a
question of time, of skilful propagandism,
and of opinion-making men seizing historic
ogpprtunities.

he martjial type of character can be bred
/without war. Strenuous honoj^and disinter-
estedness abound elsewherjji Priests and
medical men are in a fashion educated jto it,^
and we should all feel some d^ree of it im-
perative if we were conscious of our work as an

£92

MCRAL EQUIVALENT OF WAR

obligatory servige-tg^ he sta te» We shoul^S^y
be owned, as soldiers are by the army, and-.^/V
our pride would rise accordingly. We could / ^
be poor, then, without humiliation, as armyJ
oflScers now are. Th^^ n^ly thing n^rpd-^^^^V^
he Bceforward is to inflam e the civic temper l\t f^E<(Uj
as past history has inflamed the militaryPy
tempec* H. G. Wells, as Usual, sees -4he
centre of the situation. "In many ways," ^
he says, "military organization is the most
peaceful of activities. When the contempo-
rary man steps from the street, of clamorous
insincere advertisement, push, adulteration,
underselling and intermittent employment
into the barrack-yard, he steps on .to a higher
social plane, into an atmosphere of service
and cooperation and of infinitely more hon-
orable em ulations . Here at least men are
not flung out of employment to degenerate
because there is no immediate work for them .
to do. They are fed andN4rilled and trained ^
for better seiadces. Here at least a man is ,
supposed to win promotion by self-forget-

fulness and not by self-seeking. And beside.

£93

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the feeble and irregular endowment of re-
search by commercialism, its little short-
sighted snatches at profit by innovation and
scientific economy, see how remarkable is the
steady and rapid development of method and
appliances in naval and military affairs!
Nothing is more strikingthan to compare the
progress of civil conveniences which has been
left almost entirely to the trader^to the prog-
ress in military apparatus during the last
few decades^ The hnii se-appliances of to-day
\\for example, are little better than they were
VV fifty y ^xts ago. A house of to-day is still
almost as ill-ventilated, badly heated by
-• wasteful fires, clumsily arranged and fur-
^ y nished as the house of 1858\ Houses a couple
/ of hundred years old are still satisfactory
places of residence, so little have our stan-
dards risen. But the rifle or battleship of
fifty years ago was beyond all comparison
inferior to those we possess; in power, in
speed, in convenience alike. No one has a
use now for such superannuated things.'*^

^ " First and Last Things," 1908, p. %U.

^.^>

MORAL EQUIVALENT OP WAR

Wells adds^ that he thinks that the con-
ceptions of order and discipline, the tradi-
tion of service and devotion, of physical fitness,
unstinted exertion, and universal responsi-
bility, which universal military duty is no\i\
teaching European nations, will remain a per-
manent acquisition, when the last ammunition
has been used in the fireworks that cele-
brate the final peace. I believe as he does.
/It would be simply preposterous if the only
/ force that could work ideals of honor and
1 standards of eflSiciency into English or Ameri-
l can natures should^b6 thq fear of being killed
\by the Germans or the Japan ese^ ] G reats
i pdeed is Fear; b ut it is not , as our mili-
t ary enthusiasts believ e and try to mak e
us b elieve, the,..jQQly stimuIiis__.known^-iQr
a wakening the hig her ran ges of men^g spirit -
u al energy. iT he amount of alteration iuv
public opinion which my utopia postulates I
is vastly less than the diflFerence between the |
mentality of those black warriors who pur-
sued Stanley's party on the Congo with their

} " First and Last Things," 1908, p, 226.
295

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

cannibal war-cry of "Meat! Meat!" and that
of the "general-staflF" of any civilized nation.
History has seen the latter interval bridged
over: the former one can be bridged over
much more easily.

296

XII

REMARKS AT THE PEACE
BANQUET

XII

REMARKS AT THE PEACE
BANQUET^

I AM only a philosopher, and there is only one
thing that a philosopher can be relied on to
do, and that is, to contradict other philoso-
phers. In ancient times philosophers defined
man as the rational animal; and philosophers
since then have always fomid much niore to
say about the rational than about the animal
part of the definition. But looked at candidly,
reason bears about the same proportion to
the rest of human nature that we in this
hall bear to the rest of America, Europe,
Asia, Africa and Polynesia. Reason is one
of the very feeblest of nature's forces, if you
take it at only one spot and moment. It is
only in the very long run that its effects be-
come perceptible. Reason assumes to settle
things by weighing them against each other

^ Published in the OfBcial Report of the Universal
Peace Congress, held in Boston in 1904, and in the
Atlantic Monthly, December, 1904.

299

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

without prejudice, partiality or excitement;
but what affairs in the concrete are settled
by is, and always will be, just prejudices,
partialities, cupidities and excitements. Ap-
pealing to reason as we do, we are in a sort of
forlom-hope situation, like a small sand-
bank in the midst of a hungry sea ready to
wash it out of existence. But sand-banks
grow when the conditions favor; and weak as
reason is, it has this imique advantage over
its antagonists that its activity never lets up
and that it presses always in one direction,
while men's prejudices vary, their passions
ebb and flow, and their excitements are in-
termittent. Our sand-bank, I absolutely
believe, is boimd to grow. Bit by bit it will
get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting
as we do in this warm room, with music and
lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too
sanguine about our task; and since I am
called to speak, I feel as if it might not be
out of place to say a word about the strength
of our enemy.

Our permanent enemy is the rooted belli-
SOO

PEACE BANQUET

cosity of human nature, Man, biologically
considered, and whatever else he may be into
the bargain, is the most formidable of all
beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that
preys systematically on his own species. We
are once for all adapted to the military status.
A millennium of peace would not breed the
fighting disposition out of our bone and
marrow, and a function so ingrained and
vital will never consent to die without re-
sistance, and will always find impassioned
apologists and idealizers.

Not only men born to be soldiers, but non-
combatants by trade and nature, historians
in their studies, and clergymen in their pul-
pits, have been war's idealizers. They have
talked of war as of God's court of justice.
And, indeed, if we think how many things
beside the frontiers of states the wars of^
history have decided, we must feel some
respectful awe, in spite of all the horrors.
Our actual civilization, good and bad alike,
has had past wars for its determining condi-
tion. Great mindedness among the tribes

301

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

of men has always meant the will to prevail,
and all the more so if prevailing included
slaughtering and being slaughtered. Rome,
Paris, England, Brandenburg, Piedmont, —
possibly soon Japan, — along with their arms
have their traits of character and habits of
thought prevail among their conquered neigh-
bors. The blessings we actually enjoy, such
as they are, have grown up in the shadow of
the wars of antiquity. The various ideals
were backed by fighting wills, and when
neither would give way, the God of battles
had to be the arbiter. A shallow view this,
truly; for who can say what might have
prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning
and not a fighting animal? Like dead men,
dead causes tell no tales, and the ideals that
went under in the past, along with all the
tribes that represented them, find to-day no
recorder, no explainer, no defender.

But apart from theoretic defenders, and
apart from every soldierly individual strain-
ing at the leash and clamoring for opportunity,

war has an omnipotent support in the form

30£

PEACE BANQUET

of our imagination. Man lives by habits
indeed, but what he lives '/or is thrills and
excitements. The only relief from habit's
tediousness is periodical excitement. From
time immemorial wars have been, especially
for non-combatants, the supremely thrilling
excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end,
at its outset every war means an explosion
of imaginative energy. The dams of routine
burst, and boundless prospects open. The
remotest spectators share the fascination of
that awful struggle now in process on the
confines of the world. There is not a man in
this room, I suppose, who does n't buy both
an evening and a morning paper, and first
of all pounce on the war column.

A deadly listlessness would come over most
men's imagination of the future if they could
seriously be brought to believe that never
again in scecula sceculorum would a war trouble
human history. In such a stagnant summer
afternoon of a world, where would be the zest
or interest?

This is the constitution of human nature

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

which we have to work against. The plain
truth is that people want war. They want it
anyhow; for itself, and apart from each and
every possible consequence. It is the final
bouquet of life's fireworks. The born sol-
diers want it hot and actual. The non-com-
batants want it in the background, and
always as an open possibility, to feed imag-
ination on and keep excitement going. Its
clerical and historical defenders fool them-
selves when they talk as they do about it.
What moves them is not the blessings it has
won for us, but a vague religious exaltation.
War is human nature at its uttermost. We
are here to do our uttermost. It is a sacra-
ment. Society would rot without the mysti-
cal blood-payment.

We do ill, I think, therefore, to talk much
of universal peace or of a general disarmament.
We must go in for preventive medicine,
not for radical cure. We must cheat our foe,
circumvent him in detail, not try to change
his nature. In one respect war is like love,

though in no other. Both leave us intervals

304

PEACE BANQUET

of rest; and in the intervals life goes on per-
fectly well without them, though the imagina-
tion still dallies with their possibility. Equally
insane when once aroused and imder head-
way, whether they shall be aroused or not
depends on accidental circumstances. How
are old maids and old bachelors made? Not
by deliberate vows of celibacy, but by sliding
on from year to year with no sufficient matri-
monial provocation. So of the nations with
their wars. Let the general possibility of war
be left open, in Heaven's name, for the imagi-
nation to dally with. Let the soldiers dream
of killing, as the old maids dream of
marrying.

But organize in every conceivable way the
practical machinery for making each suc^
cessive chance of war abortive. Put peace
men in power; educate the editors and states-
men to responsibility. How beautifully did
their trained responsibility in England make
the Venezuela incident abortive! Seize every
pretext, however small, for arbitration

methods, and multiply the precedents; foster

305

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

rival excitements, and invent new outlets for
heroic enwgy; and from one generation to
another the diances are that irritation will
grow less acute and states of strain less danger-
ous among the nations. Armies and navies
will continue, of course, and fire the minds
of populations with their potentialities of
greatness. But their oflScers will find that
somehow or other, with no deliberate inten-
tion on any one's part, each successive "inci-
dent" has managed to evaporate and to lead
nowhere, and that the thought of what might
have been remains their only consolation.

The last weak runnings of the war spirit
will be "punitive expeditions." A country
that turns its arms only against uncivilized
foes is, I think, wrongly taunted as degenerate.
Of course it has ceased to be heroic in the old
grand style. But I verily beheve that this
is because it now sees something better. It
has a conscience. It will still perpetrate
peccadillos. But it is afraid, afraid in the
good sense, to engage in absolute crimes

against civilization.

306

xra

THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE
COLLEGE-BRED

> vv-^ ^p

j^-:

THE SOCIAL VALUE OP THE
COLLEGE-BRteDi

Of what use is a college training? We who A
have had it seldom hear the question raised;
we might be a little nonplussed to answer
it offhand. A certain amount of meditation
has brought me to this as the pithiest reply
which I myself can give: The best claim that
a college education can possibly make on your
respect, the best thing it can aspire to accom-
plish for you, is this: that it shoulcP h^lj^jioui.
-^ to know a good man when you see fej aL*,.jrhis ^
is as true of women's as of men's colleges;
but that it is neither a joke nor a one-sided
abstraction I shall now endeavor to show.

What talk do we commonly hear about the
contrast between college education and the
education which business or technical or pro-

* Address delivered at a meeting of the Association
of American Alumnse at Radcli£Fe College, November
7, 1907, and first published in McClure*8 Magazine for
February, 1908.

309

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

fessional schools confer? The college educa-^
tion is called higher because it is supposed to
be so general and so disinterested. At the
"schools'* you get a relatively narrow practi-
cal skill, you are told, whereas the "col-
leges" give you the irmrft libpral f>iiltiirft, the
br oader ou Uook, the his torica l perspective, the
philosophic atmosphere, or something which
phrases of that sort try to express. You are
made into an efficient instrument for doing a
definite thing, you hear, at the schools; but,
apart from that, you may remain a crude and
smoky kind of petroleum, incapable of spread-
ing Kght. The universities and colleges, on
the other hand, although they may leave you
less efficient for this or that practical task,^
suffuse your whole mentality with something
more important than skillX/They redeem you,
make you well-l)red; they make "good com-
pany " of you mentally. If they find you with
a naturally boorish or caddish mind , they
cannot leave you so, as a technical school
may leave you. This, at least, is pretended;
this is what we hear among college^trained

810

V'!

■\

THE COLLEGE-BRED

people when they compare their education
with every other sort. Now, exactly how
much does this signify?

It is certain, to berin with, that the narrow-
est trade or professional training does some-
thing more for a man than to make a skilful
practical itool] of him — it makes him also a
judge of other men^s skill. Whether his

> trade be pleading at the bar or surgery or
plastering or plumbing, it develops a criti-
cal sense in him for that sort of occupation.
He understands the difference between second-PS
rate and first-rate work in his whole branch j
of industry; he gets to know a good job in
his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting
to know this in his own line, he gets a faint \
sense of what good work may mean anyhow, J
that may, if circumstances favor, spread into A
his judgments elsewhere. Sound work, clean \

^ work , finished work: feeble work, slack work,
sham work — these words express an identi-
cal contrast in many diflFerent departments
of activity. In so far forth, then, even the

humblest manual trade may beget in one a

311

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

certain small degree of power to judge of
good work generally, l/

Now, what is supposed to be the line of us

Who have the higher college training? Is
there any broader Hne — since our education
claims primarily not to be "narrow^' — in
which we also are made good judges between
what is first-rate and what is second-rate
only? What is^especially taught in the col-
leges has long been known by the name of
the ".humamtie^" and these are often iden-
tified wi th Greek an d Latin. But it is only
as literatures, not as languages, that Greek
and Latin have any general humanity- value;
so that in a broad sense the humanities mean
l iterature primarily^ and in a still broader _

. ssnsfijjie study ^f masterpieces in almost any
field of human ^ndeavor > JLiterature^keeps
the primaoy ; for it not only consists of master-
pieces, but is largely about masterpiecei^
being little more than an appreciative chro-
nicle of human master-strokes, so far as it
takes the form of criticism and history. You

can give humanistic value to almost any-

312

THE COLLEGE-BBffiD v/

thing by teacEing ^tjystorically. Geology,
economids^ mechanics, are humanities when
taught with reference to the successive
achievements of the geniuses to which these
sciences owe their beings Not taught thus
literature remains grammar, art a catalogue,
history a list of^ate^ W^jp.tui:^l^g]^uce a
sheet of formmas ana weignts and nreaisures
. T he sifting of human creat ions! — nothing
^less than this is what we ought to mean by the
hu maniti es. Essentially this means biogra-
phy; what our colleges should teach is, there-
fore, biographical history, that not of politics
merely, but of anything and everything so far
as human eflforts and conquests are factors that
have played their part. Studying in this way,
we learn what types of activity have stood the
test of time; we acquire standards of the ex-
cellent and durable. All our arts and sciences
and institutions are but so many quests of
perfection on the part of men; and when we
see hovv^ diverse the types of excellence may
be, how various the tests, how flexible the

adaptations, we gain a richer sense of what the
* 313

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

terms "better'* and "wOTse" may signify in
general. Our critical sensibilities grow both ^
\ £J more acute and less fanatical. We sympathize
\P with men's mistakes ev^i in the act of pene-

Itrating them; we feel the pathos of lost
causes and misguided epochs even while we
applaud what overcame them. ^

ySuch words^are vague and suph ideas are
inadequate7 but their meaning is unmistak-
able. What the colleges — teaching human-
ities, by examples which may be a)ecial, bu^^^^^^H
which m ust be typical and pregn ant — should ^* ^"^^
at le ast try to give us, is a ge neral sense of
what^ imder various disguises, superwrity
1 1 has ah

^3^_si§

, ^^_ c^ ied and may still signify.

jf^he feehng for a good human job anywhere,

the admiration of the really admirable, the

disesteem of what is cheap and trashy and

impermanent, — thi&is-^chat we call the criti-

al sense, the sense f or ide al values>. It is the

better part of w hat^ meoknowas wisdom^ /"

Some of us are wise in this way naturally

and by geni us; s ome of us never become so.

But to have spent one's youth at college, in

814

THE COLLEGE-BRED

contact with the choice andrare and precious,
and yet still to be a blind p»g or ^garian,
unable to scent, out l^^iTTif ^ excellence or tcL
HivJTiPTt flTnj(l its fl/v*i^fiTit s, to know it on ly
whe n ticketed arid labelled and foTvH nn ng
by othersythis indeed should be accounted
the very calamity and shipwreck of a highep^
education.

The sense for human superiority oughti-

then, to be considered our line, as boring suh-l

er's line and th e surgeon'sl

[)lleges7Qu^ t to have

Jit m> in us a lasting relish fof me better kind

o f BEtfwi, ^ loss of appetite for mediocrities^
and a disgust fo r cheap ^acks. We ought to '
smelli a^it -wwer^be^difference of quality m >^ \i

men . and th^ proposals w hen wo outer the

jjg orld of ttffairs about -us. Expertness in this

might well atone for some of our awkwardness

at accoimt s, for some of our ignoran ce of

dynamos, ine best claim we can iSalEe for

the higher educatiou, the best single phrase

in which we can tell what it oug h|; to do for

us, is, then, exactly what I saidi it should

815

K/i

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

r. enable us to know a good man when we
I see him.

That the phrase is anything but an empty
epigram follows from the fact that if you ask
yV^ ^ what line it is most important that a democ-
racy like ours should have its sons and daugh-
ters skilful, you see that it is this Kne more
than any other. "The people in their wis-
dom" — this is the kind of wisdom most
needed by the people. Democracy is on its ^y
j trial, and no one knows how it will stand the
ordeal. Abounding about us are pessimistic
prophets. Fickleness and violence used to be,
but are no longer, the vices which they charge
to democracy. What its critics now aflSrm
is that its preferences, are iijveterately for the
inferior. So it was in the beginning, tney say/^^pr'
and so it will be world without end. Vul-^^^^'Jf
garity enthroned and institutionalized, elbow-
ing everything superior from the highway,
this, they tell us, is our irremediable destiny;
and the picture-papers of the European con-
tinent are already drawing Uncle Sam with

the hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic

816

THE COLLEGE-BRED

"^blem. I'he privileged aristocracies of ihe\
foretime, with all their iniquities, did at least
preserve some taste for higher human quality,
and honor certain forms of refinement by /
their enduring traditions. But when democ-
racy is sovereign, its doubters say, nobility
will form a sort of invisible church, and sin-
cerity and refinement, stripped of honor, pre-
cedence, and favor, will have to vegetate on
suflferance in private corners. They will
have no general ijifluenoBk The y mil be
harmless eccentricities.

Now, who can be absolutely certain that
this may not be the career of democracy?
Nothing future is quite secure; states enough
have inwardly rotted; and democracy as a
whole may undergo self poiaoning .V But, on
the otner hand, democracy is a kind of re-
lig^, and we are bound ^ B^&t to admit its ^^^^^ted^a
SnureT Faiths and Utopias are the noblest
exercise of human reason, and no one with a
spark of reason ia him will sit down f atal-
istically before the croaker's picture. The

best of us are filled with the contrary vision of

817

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

a democracy stumbling through every «rroi

till its institutions glow with justice and its

( customs shine with beauty. Oiu* better men J

^^v*^--^wAaZZ show the way and we shaU follow themT/

^ so we are brought round again to the mission

of the higher education in helping us to know )

Vthe better kind of man whenever we see him. \

, The notion that a people can run itself and

its affairs anonymously is now well kftownlp .

be the silliest of ab surdities. Mankind does

nothing save through initiatives on the part

of inventors, great or small, and imitaticm bjr

the rest of us — these are the sole factors .

active in human progress. Individuals of

genius show the way, ajud set the patterns,

,A**which common people then adopt and follow.

gJ^ly^iThe rivalry of the patterns is the history of the

Ju^,/^\ /world. Our democratic problem thus is stat-

A^\/^^ ,^^ able in ultra-simple terms: Who are the kind

r i || of men from whom our majorities shall take

! their cue? Whom shall they treat as rightful

' leaders? We and our leaders are the x and

the y of the equation h^^; afl oth^ historic

circumstances, be they eccHiomical, political,

818

Kj^j

THE COLLEGE-BRED

or intellectual, are only the background of
occasion on which the/Hving drama works
itself out between us. wVo) . 'd^ >-^ c^^c^
In this very simple way does the value of
our educated class define itself: ly^ y^f^iK thftP
others should be ab le to divine the wort.hiCT
and better leaders. The terms here are mo:
strously simplified, of coui^se, but such a
bird's-eye view lets us immediately take our
be arings. In our d emocracy , where every-
g else is so stilting, we alumni and alunmse
f the colleges are the only permanent presence j ^
' at corresponds to the aristocracy in old erj j
countries.f We have continuous traditions, as T
they have; our motto, too, is noblesse oblige;*
and, imlike them, we stand for ideal interests ^
solely, for we have no corporate selfishness
and wield no powers of corruption. We ought
to have our own class-consciousnessy^ ^^Les
IntellectuelsJ'' What prouder club-name
could there be than this one, used ironically
by the party of "redblood," the party of
every stupid prejudice and passion, during

the anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the men

319

V-^y**^^"

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

in France who still retained some critical
sense and judgment! Critical -^sensfii^ it has
to be confessed, is T|ot An pyn^finfr tprm. hardly
a banner to carry in processions. Aflfections
for old habit, currents of self-interest, and
gales of passion are the forces that keep the
human ship moving; and the pressure of the
judicious pilot's hand upon the tiller is a
\ relatively insignificant energy. But the aflfec-
tions, passions, and interestg^are shifting,
successive, and distrau^t; they blow in
alternation while the pilot's hand is steadfast.
. Bte knows the ^e^ii^ass, and, with all the lee-
' ways he is obliged to tack toward, he always
makes some headway. A small force, if it\
never lets up, will accumulate effects more/
considerable than those of much greater forces
if these work inconsistently. The ceaseless/
whisper of the more permanent ideals, the\
steady tug of truth and justice, give them but \
time, mtist warp the world in their direction.

\This bird's-eye view of the general steerin g
fu nction of the college-bred amid the drif tiifgs
of democracy ought to help us to a wIj*^^

320

' THE COLLEGE-BRED

^v^ion of what our colleges themselves should -^
aim at. If we are to be the j^eastcakfijoudb- ^^^

<^^/4 riocracy's dough , if we are to make it rise with "^
i^/t;ulture's prefer ences, we .yu^ ye to it that^
cultiu-e spreads -broaS^^aife^ We must^ hake ^
f /the old double reefs out of the canvas into the

wind and sunshine, and let in every modern
subject, siu-e that any subject will prove
hu manistic , if its setting be kept only
wide enough.

Stevenson says somewhere to his reader:
^ You think you are just making this bargain,
but you are really laying down a link in the
policy of mankind/^ Well, yoiu* technical
school should enable you to make your bargain
splendidly; but yoiu* coUe^ should show you
just the place of that kind of bargain — a
|)retty poor place, possibly — in the Whole
policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal
outlook, of perspective, of atmosphere, which
should surround every subject as a college
deals with it.

We of the colleges must eradicate a ciu-ious

I 'on which numbers of good people have

321

MEMORIES AND STUDIE^^

about such ancient seats of learning as 'EH^'^
yard, ^^o many ignorant outsiders, tbat
name suggests little more than a kind of ster-
ilized conceit and incapacity for being pleased.
In Edith Wyatt's exquisite book of Chicago
sketches called "Every One his Own Way'*
there is a couple who stand if or culture in the
sense of exclusiveness, Richard Elliot and his
feminine counterpart -r-^feeble caricatures of
tnankind, unable to know any good thing
♦when they see it, incapable of enjoyment
unless a printed label gives them leave. Pos- '^
sibly this type of culture may exist near Cam-
bridge and Boston. There may be specimens
there, for priggishness is just like painter's
colic or any other trade-disease. But every
good college makes its students immune
against this malady, of which the microbe
haunts the neighborhood of printed pages.
It does so by its general tone being too hearty^
for the microbe's life. Real^ulture- lives by
sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes
and disdains; under all nusleaiding wrappings

it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

322

THE COLLEGE-BRED

If a college, thibugh the inferior human in-
fluences that have grown regnant there, fails
to catph the robuster tone, its failiu*e is co-
lossal, for its social function stops: democracy
gives it a wide berth, tiu-ns toward it a deaf
ear,

"Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word
to use, but there is no other, and this whole
meditation is over questions of tone. By their
tone are pU thing s human either lost or saved.
V If democracy is to be saved it must catch thai y^
higher, healt hier to ne. If we are to impress r^
it with our preferences, we ourselves must use
the proper tone, which we, in turn, must have
caught from oiu* own teachers. It all reverts
in the end to the action of innumerable imi- / /
tative individuals upon each other and to the
question of whose tone has the highest spread-
ing power. As a class, we college graduates \
should look to it that ours has spreading power. /
It oug ht to^ aye the highest spreading power. I

In our essential function of indicating the''^
better men, we now have formidable com-
petitors outside. McClure'a Magazine^ the

323

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

American Magazine^ Collier's Weekly^ and,
in its fashion, the WorUTs Worh^ constitute
together a real popular university along this
very line. It would be a pity if any future
historian were to have to write words like
these: "By the middle of the twentieth
century the higher institutions of learning
had lost all influence over public opinion in
the United States. But the mission of raising
the tone of democracy, which they had proved
themselves so lamentably unfitted to exert,
was assumed with rare enthusiasm and pro-
secuted with extraordinary skill and success
by a new educational power; and for the
clarification of their human sympathies and
elevation of their human preferences, the
people at large acquired the habit of resorting
exclusively to the guidance of certain private
literary adventures, commonly designated in
the market by the affectionate name of ten-
cent magazines/'

Must not we of the colleges see to it that no
historian shall ever say anything like this?

Vague as the phrase of knowing a good man

824

THE COLLEGE-BRED

when you see him may be, diflFuse and indefi-
nite as one must leave its application, is there
any other formula that describes so well the
result at which our institutions ought to aim?*^
K they do that, they do the best thing con-
ceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very*^
deed. It surely is a fine synthetic/ formula. ^-^^[M^// -f^
If our faculties and graduates^'^ould once // /// /
collectively come to realize it as the great
underlying purpose toward which they have
always been more or less obsciKely groping,
a great clearness would be shed over many of
their problems; and, as for their influence
in the midst of our social system, it would
embark upon a new career of strength.

V ^^

XIV

THE UNIVERSITY AND
THE INDIVIDUAL

I. THE PH.D, OCTOPUS*

Some years ago we had at our Harvard
Graduate School a very brilliant student of
Philosophy, who, after leaving us and sup-
porting himself by literary labor for three
years, received an appointment to teach
English Literature at a sister-institution of
learning. The governors of this institution,
however, had no sooner communicated the
appointment than they made the awful
discovery that they had enrolled upon their
staff a person who was unprovided with the
Ph.D. degree. The man in questi6n had
been satisfied to work at Philosophy for her
own sweet (or bitter) sake, and had disdained
to consider that an academic bauble should
be his reward.

His appointment had thus been made under
a misunderstanding. He was not the proper
man; and there was nothing to do but to

* Published in the Harvard MofiMyy March, 1903.
829

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

inform him of the fact. It was notified to him
by his xiew President that his appointment
must be revoked, or that a Harvard doctor's
degree must forthwith be procured.

Although it was already the spring of the
year, our Subject, being a man of spirit, took
up the challenge, turned his back upon liter-
ature (which in view of his approaching duties
might have seemed his more iKgent concern)
and spent the weeks that were left him, in
writing a metaphysical thesis and grinding
his psychology, logic and history of philoso-
phy up again, so as to pass our formidable
ordeals.

When the thesis came to be read by our

conunittee, we could not pass it. Brilliancy

and originality by themselves won't save a

thesis for the doctorate; it must also exhibit

a heavy technical apparatus of learning; and

this oiu" candidate had neglected to bring to

bear. So, telling him that he was temporarily

rejected, we advised him to pad out the thesis

properly, and return with it next year, at the

same time informing his new President that

SSO

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

this signified nothing as to his merits, that he
was of ultra Ph.D. quality, and one of the
strongest men with whom we had ever had
to deal.

To our surprise we were given to under-
stand in reply that the quality per se of the
man signified nothing in this connection, and
that three magical letters were the thing
seriously required. The College had always
gloried in a list of faculty members who bore
the doctor's title, and to make a gap in the
galaxy, and admit a common fox without a
tail, would be a degradation impossible to be
thought of. We wrote again, pointing out
that a Ph.D. in philosophy would prove little
anyhow as to one's ability to teach literature;
we sent separate letters in which we outdid
each other in eulogy of our candidate's
powers, for indeed they were great; and at
last, mirabile dictUy our eloquence prevailed.
He was allowed to retain his appointment
provisionally, on condition that one year
later at the farthest his miserably naked name

should be prolonged by the sacred appendage

831

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the lack of which had given so much trouble
to all concerned.

Accordingly he came up here the following
spring with an adequate thesis (known since
in print as a most brilliant contribution to
metaphysics), passed a first-rate examination,
wiped out the stain, and brought his college
into proper relations with the worid again.
Whether his teaching, during that first year,
of English Literatiu'e was made any the better
by the impending examination in a different
subject, is a question which I will not try to
solve.

I have related this incident at such length

because it is so characteristic of American

academic conditions at the present day.

Graduate schools still are something of a

novelty, and higher diplomas something of a

rarity.^ The latter, therefore, carry a vague

sense of preciousness and honor, and have a

particularly "up-to-date'* appearance, and it

is no wonder if smaller institutions, unable to

attract professors already eminent, and forced

usually to recruit their faculties from the

332

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

relatively young, should hope to compensate
for the obscurity of the names of their officers
of instruction by the abundance of decora-
tive titles by which those names are followed
on the pages of the catalogues where they
appear. The dazzled reader of the list, the
parent or student, says to himself, "This must
be a terribly distinguished crowd, — their

titles shine like the stars in the firmament;

Ph.D.'s, S.D.'s, and Litt.D.'s, bespangle the
page as if they were sprinkled over it from
a pepper caster."

Himaan nature is once for all so childish
that every reality becomes a sham somewhere,
and in the minds of Presidents and Trustees
the Ph.D. degree is in point of fact already
looked upon as a mere advertising resource,
a manner of throwing dust in the Public's
eyes. "No instructor who is not a Doctor'*
has become a maxim in the smaller institu-
tions which represent demand; and in each
of the larger ones which represent supply,
the same belief in decorated scholarship

expresses itself in two antagonistic passions,

SS3

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

one for multiplying as much as possible the
annual output of doctors, the other for raising
the standard of diflSculty in passing, so that
the Ph.D. of the special institution shall
carry a higher blaze of distinction than it
does elsewhere. Thus we at Harvard are
proud of the number of candidates whom we
reject, and of the inability of men who are
not distingues in intellect to pass oiu* tests.

America is thus as a nation rapidly drifting
towards a state of things in which no man of
science or letters will be accounted respecta-
ble unless some kind of badge or diploma is
stamped upon him, and in which bare person-
ality will be a mark of outcast estate. It
seems to me high time to rouse ourselves to
consciousness, and to cast a critical eye upon
this decidedly grotesque tendency. Other
nations suffer terribly from the Mandarin
disease. Are we doomed to suffer like the
rest?

Our higher degrees were instituted for the

laudable purpose of stimulating scholarship,

especially in the form of "original research."

334

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

Experience has proved that great as the love
of truth may be among men, it can Ibe made
still greater by adventitious rewards. The
winning of a diploma certifying mastery and
marking a barrier successfully passed, acts
as a challenge to the ambitious; and if the
diploma will help to gain bread-winning
positions also, its power as a stimulus to work
is tremendously increased. So far, we are
on innocent ground; it is well for a country
to have research in abundance, and oiu* gradu-
ate schools do but apply a normal psychologi-
cal spiu-. But the institutionizing on a large
scale of any natural combination of need and
motive always tends to run into technicality
and to develop a tyrannical Machine with
unforeseen powers of exclusion and corruption.
Observation of the workings of our Harvard
system for twenty years past has brought some
of these drawbacks home to my conscious-
ness, and I should like to call the attention of
my readers to this disadvantageous aspect of
the pictiu-e, and to make a couple of remedial
suggestions, if I may.

335

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

In the first place, it would seem that to
stimulate study, and to increase the gelehrtes
Publikumy the class of highly educated men
in our country, is the only positive good, and
consequently the sole direct end at which
our graduate schools, with their diploma-
giving powers, should aim. If other results
have developed they should be deemed secon-
dary incidents, and if not desirable in them-
selves, they should be carefully guarded
against.

To interfere with the free development of
talent, to obstruct the natural play of supply
and demand in the teaching profession, to
foster academic snobbery by the prestige of
certain privileged institutions, to transfer
accredited value from essential manhood to
an outward badge, to blight hopes and pro-
mote invidious sentiments, to divert the
attention of aspiring youth from direct deal-
ings with truth to the passing of examinations,
— such consequences, if they exist, ought
surely to be regarded as drawbacks to the
system, and an enlightened public conscious-

SS6

THE PH.D. OCTOPOS

ness ought to be keenly alive to the importance
of reducing their amount. Candidates them-
selves do seem to be keenly conscious of some
of these evils, but outside of their ranks or in
the general public no such consciousness, so
far as I can see, exists; or if it does exist, it
fails to express itself aloud. Schools, Colleges,
and Universities, appear enthusiastic over
the entire system, just as it stands, and
unanimously applaud all its developments.

I beg the reader to consider some of the
secondary evils which I have enumerated.
First of all, is not our growing tendency to
appoint no instructors who are not also doctors
an instance of pure sham? Will any one
pretend for a moment that the doctor's
degree is a guarantee that its possessor will
be successful as a teacher? Notoriously his
moral, social and personal characteristics
may utterly disqualify him for success in the '
class-room; and of these characteristics his
doctor's examination is unable to take any
account whatever. Certain bare human beings

will always be better candidates for a given

837

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

place than all the doctor-applicants on hand;
and to exclude the former by a rigid rule,
and in the end to have to sift the latter by-
private inquiry into their personal peculiar-
ities among those who know them, just as if
they were not doctors at all, is to stultify
one's own procedure. You may say that at
least you guard against ignorance of the
subject by considering only the candidates
who are doctors; but how then about making
doctors in one subject teach a different sub-
ject? This happened in the instance by which
I introduced this article, and it happens daily
and hourly in all our colleges? The truth is
that the Doctor-Monopoly in teaching, which
is becoming so rooted an American custom,
can show no serious grounds whatsoever for
itself in reason. As it actually prevails and
grows in vogue among us, it is due to
childish motives exclusively. In reality it
is but a sham, a bauble, a dodge, whereby
to decorate the catalogues of schools and
colleges.

Next, let us turn from the general promo-
338

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

tion of a spirit of academic snobbery to the
particular damage done to individuals by the
system.

There are plenty of individuals so well en-
dowed by nature that they pass with ease
all the ordeals with which life confronts them.
Such persons are bom for professional success.
Examinations have no terrors for them, and
interfere in no way with their spiritual or
worldly interests. There are others, not so
gifted who nevertheless rise to the challenge,
get a stimulus from the difficulty, and become
doctors, not without some baleful nervous
wear and tear and retardation of their purely
inner life, but on the whole successfully, and
with advantage. These two classes form the
natural Ph.D.'s for whom the degree is legit-
imately instituted. To be sure, the degree
is of no consequence one way or the other for
the first sort of man, for in him the personal
worth obviously outshines the title. To the
second set of persons, however, the doctor
ordeal may contribute a touch of energy and

solidity of scholarship which otherwise they

33^

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

might have lacked, and were our candidates
all drawn from these classes, no oppression
would result from the institution.
1 But there is a third class of persons who are
genuinely, and in the most pathetic sense,
the institution's victims. For this type of
character the academic life may become,
after a certain point, a virulent poison. Men
without marked originality or native force,
but fond of truth and especially of books
and study, ambitious of reward and recogni-
tion, poor often, and needing a degree to get
a teaching position, weak in the eyes of their
examiners, — among these we find the veri-
table chair d canon of the wars of learning,'
the xmfit in the academic struggle for exis-
tence. There are individuals of this sort for
whom to pass one degree after another seems
the limit of earthly aspiration. Your private
advice does not discourage them. They will
fail, and go away to recuperate, and then pre-*
sent themselves for another ordeal, and some-
times prolong the process into middle life.

Or else, if they are less heroic morally they

840

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

will accept the failure as a sentence of doom
that they are not fit, and are broken-spirited
men thereafter.

We of the miiversity faculties are respon- 1
sible for deliberately creating this new class \
of American social failures, and heavy is the
responsibility. We advertise our "schools"
and send out our degree-requirements, know-
ing well that aspirants of all sorts will be
attracted, and at the same time we set a
standard which intends to pass no man who
has not native intellectual distinction. We
know that there is no test, however absurd,
by which, if a title or decoration, a public
badge or mark, were to be won by it, some
weakly suggestible ©r hauntable persons would
not feel challenged, and remain imhappy if
they went without it. We dangle our three
magic letters before the eyes of these predes-
tined victims, and they swarm to us like moths
to an electric light. They come at a time
when failure can no longer be repaired easily
and when the wounds it leaves are permanent;

and we say deliberately that mere work f aith-

841

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

fully performed, as they perform it, will not
by itself save them, they must in addition
put in evidence the one thing they have not
got, namely this quaUty of intellectual dis-
tinction. Occasionally, out of sheer human
pity, we ignore our high and mighty standard
and pass them. Usually, however, the stan-
dard, and not the candidate, commands our
fidelity. The result is caprice, majorities of
one on the jury, and on the whole a confession
that our pretensions about the degree cannot
be Uved up to consistently. Thus, partiality
in the favored cases; in the unfavored, blood
on our hands; and in both a bad conscience, -*-
are the results of our administration.

The more widespread becomes the popular
belief that our diplomas are indispensable
hall-marks to show the sterling metal of their
holders, the more widespread these corrup-
tions will become. We ought to look to the
future carefully, for it takes generations for
a national custom, once rooted, to be grown
away from. All the European countries are

seeking to diminish the check upon individual

S42

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

spontaneity whidi state examinations with
their tyrannous growth have brought in their
train. We have had to institute state exam-
inations too; and it will perhaps be fortunate
if some day hereafter our descendants, com-
paring machine with machine, do not sigh
with regret for old times and American free-
dom, and wish that the regime of the dear old
bosses might be reinstalled, with plain human
nature, the glad hand and the marble heart,
liking and disliking, and man-to-man rela-
tions grown possible again. Meanwhile, what-
ever evolution our state-examinations are
destined to undergo, our universities at least
should never cease to regard themselves as
the jealous custodians of personal and spirit-
ual spontaneity. They are indeed its only
organized and recognized custodians in Amer-
ica to-day. They ought to guard against con-
tributing to the increase of oflScialism and
snobbery and insincerity as against a pesti-
lence; they ought to keep truth and dis-
interested labor always in the foreground,

treat degrees as secondary incidents, and in

343

< MEMORIES AND STUDIES

season and out of season make it plain
that what they live for is to help men's
■souls, and not to decorate their persons
with diplomas.

There seem to be three obvious ways in
which the increasing hold of the Ph.D.
Octopus upon American life can be kept
in check.

The first way lies with the universities.
They can lower their fantastic standards
(which here at Harvard we are so proud of)
and give the doctorate as a matter of course,
v/ just as they give the bachelor's degree, for a

due amoimt of time spent in patient labor in
a special department of learning, whether the
man be a brilliantly gifted individual or not.
Surely native distinction needs no official
stamp, and should disdain to ask for one.
On the other hand, faithful labor, however
commonplace, and years devoted to a sub-
ject, always deserve to be acknowledged and
requited.

The second way lies with both the univer-
sities and colleges. Let them give up their

844

:THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

unspeakably silly ambition to bespangle their
lists of oflScers with these doctorial titles
Let them look more to substance and less to
vanity and sham.

The third way lies with the individual
student, and with his personal advisers in the
faculties. Every man of native power, who
might take a higher degree, and refuses to do
so, because examinations interfere with the
free following out of his more immediate
intellectual aims, deserves well of his country,
and in a rightly organized community, would
not be made to suffer for his independence.
With many men the passing of these extran-
eous tests is a very grievous interference in-
deed. Private letters of recommendation
from their instructors, which in any event are
ultimately needful, ought, in these cases,
completely to offset the lack of the bread-
winning degree; and instructors ought to \
be ready to advise students against it upon
occasion, and to pledge themselves to back
them later personally, in the market-struggle

which they have to face.

345

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

It is indeed odd to see this love of. titles —
and such titles — growing up in a country of
which the recognition of individuality and bare
manhood have so long been supposed to be
the very souJj The independence of the State,
in which most of our colleges stand, relieves
us of those more odious forms of academic
politics which continental European coimtries
present. Anything like the elaborate univer-
sity machine of France, with its throttling in-
fluences upon individuals is unknown here.
The spectacle of the "Rath" distinction in
its inniunerable spheres and grades, with
which all Germany is crawling to-day, is dis-
pleasing to American eyes; and displeasing
also in some respects is the institution of
knighthood in England, which, aping as it
does an aristocratic title, enables one's wife
as well as one's self so easily to dazzle the
servants at the house of one's friends. But
are we Americans ourselves destined after all
to hunger after similar vanities on an infinitely
more contemptible scale? And [is individual-
ity with us also going to count for nothing

S46

THE PH.D. OCTOPUS

unless stamped and licensed and authenticated
by some title-giving machine^^I^t^ pray
that our ancient national genius may long
preserve vitality enough to guard us from a
future so unmanly and so unbeautiful!

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

n. THE TRUE HARVARD^

When a man gets a decoration from a
foreign institution, he may take it as an honor.
Coming as mine has come to-day, I prefer to
take it for that far more valuable thing, a
token of personal good will from friends.
Recognizing the good will and the friendli-
ness, I am going to respond to the chairman's
call by speaking exactly as I feel.

I am not an alumnus of the College. I
have not even a degree from the Scientific
School, in which I did some study forty years
ago. I have no right to vote for Overseers,
and I have never felt imtil to-day as if I were
a child of the house of Harvard in the fullest
sense. Harvard is many things in one — a
school, a forcing house for thought, and also a
social club; and the club aspect is so strong,
the family tie so close and subtle among our
Bachelors of Arts that all of us here who are

^ Speech at tlfe Harvard Commencement Dinner,
June 24, 1903, after receiving an LL.D. degree. Printed
in the Graduates* Magazine for September, 1903.
348

THE TRUE HARVARD

in my pKght, no matter how long we may
have lived here, always feel a little like out-
siders on Commencement day. We have no
class to walk with, and we often stay away
from the procession. It may be foolish, but
it is a fact. I don't believe that my dear
friends Shaler, HoUis, Lanman, or Royce
ever have felt quite as happy or as much
at home as my friend Barrett Wendell feels
upon a day like this.

I wish to use my present privilege to say
a word for these outsiders with whom I
belong. Many years ago there was one of
them from Canada here — a man with a
high-pitched voice, who could n't fully agree
with all the points of my philosophy. At a
lecture one day, when I was in the full flood
of my eloquence, his voice rose above mine,
exclaiming: "But, doctor, doctor! to be
serious for a moment . . . , " in so sincere a
tone that the whole room burst out laughing.
I want you now to be serious for a moment
while I say my little say. We are glorifying

ourselves to-day, and whenever the name of

849

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Harvard is emphatically uttered on such
days, frantic cheers go up. There are days
for affection, when pure sentiment and loyalty
come rightly to the fore. But behind our
mere animal feeling for old schoolmates and
the Yard and the bell, and Memorial and the
clubs and the river and the Soldiers' Field,
there must be something deeper and more
rational. There ought at any rate to be some
possible ground in reason for one's boiling
over with joy that one is a son of Harvard,
and was not, by some unspeakably horrible
accident of birth, predestined to graduate at
Yale or at Cornell. ^

Any college can foster club loyalty of that
sort. The only rational ground for pre-emi-
nent admiration of any single college would
be its pre-eminent spiritual tone. But to be a
college man in the mere clubhouse sense — I
care not of what college — affords no guar-
antee of real superiority in spiritual tone.

The old notion that book learning can be a

panacea for the vices of society lies pretty

well shattered to-day. I say this in spite of

350

THE TRUE HARVARD

certain utterances of the President of this
University to the teachers last year. That
sanguine-hearted man seemed then to think
that if the schools would only do their duty
better, social vice might cease. But vice will
never cease. Every level of culture breeds
its own peculiar brand of it as surely as one
soil breeds sugar-cane, and another soil breeds
cranberries. If we were asked that disagree-
able question, "What are the bosom- vices
of the level of culture which our land and day
have reached? '' we should be forced, I think,
to give the still more disagreeable answer
that they are swindling and adroitness, and
the indulgence of swindling and adroitness,
and cant, and sympathy with cant — natural
fruits of that extraordinary idealization of
"success" in the mere outward sense of "get-
ting there,'* and getting there on as big a
scale as we can, which characterizes our
present generation. What was Reason given
to man for, some satirist has said, except to
enable him to invent reasons for what he

wants to do. We might say the same of edu-

351

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

cation. We see college graduates on every
side of every public question. Some of Tam-
many's stanchest supporters are Harvard
men. Harvard men defend our treatment of
our Filipino allies as a masterpiece of policy
and morals. Harvard men, as journalists,
pride themselves on producing copy for any
side that may enlist them. There is not a
public abuse for which some Harvard advo-
cate may not be found.

In the successful sense, then, in the worldly
sense, in the club sense, to be a college man,
even a Harvard man, affords no sure guarantee
for anything but a more educated cleverness
in the service of popular idols and vulgar
ends. Is there no inner Harvard within the
outer Harvard which means definitively more
than this — for which the outside men who
come here in such numbers, come? They
come from the remotest outskirts of our
coimtry, without introductions, without school
affiliations; special students, scientific stu-
dents, graduate students, poor students of

the College, who make their living as they

352

THE TRUE HARVARD

•

go. They seldom or never darken the doors
of the Pudding or the Porcellian; they hover
in the background on days when the crimson
color is most in evidence, but they nevertheless
are intoxicated and exultant with the nourish-
ment they find here; and their loyalty is
deeper and subtler and more a matter of the
inmost soul than the gregarious loyalty of
the clubhouse pattern often is.

Indeed, there is such an inner spiritual
Harvard; and the men I speak of, and for
whom I speak to-day, are its true mission-
aries and carry its gospel into infidel parts.
When they come to Harvard, it is not pri-
marily because she is a club. It is because
they have heard of her persistently atomistic
constitution, of her tolerance of exceptionality
and eccentricity, of her devotion to the prin-
ciples of individual vocation and choice. It
is because you cannot make single one-ideaed
regiments of her classes. It is because she
cherishes so many vital ideals, yet makes a
scale of value among them; so that even her

apparently incurable second-rateness (or only

853

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

occasional first-rateness) in intercollegiate ath-
letics comes from her seeing so well that sport
is but sport, that victory over Yale is not the
whole of the law and the prophets, and that a
popgun is not the crack of doom.

The true ChUrch was always the invisible
Church. The true Harvard is the invisible
Harvard in the souls of her more truth-seek-
ing and independent and often very solitary
sons. Thoughts are the precious seeds of
which our universities should be the botanical
gardens. Beware when God lets loose a
thinker on the world — either Carlyle or
Emerson said that — for all things then have
to rearrange themselves. But the thinkers
in their youth are almost always very lonely
creatures. "Alone the great sun rises and
alone spring the great streams." The uni-
versity most worthy of rational admiration
is that one in which your lonely thinker can
feel himself least lonely, most positively-
furthered, and most richly fed. On an occa-
sion like this it would be poor taste to draw

comparisons between the colleges, and in

854

THE TRUE HARVARD

their mere clubhouse quality they cannot
differ widely: — all must be worthy of the
loyalties and affections they arouse. But as a
nursery for independent and lonely thinkers /
I do beheve that Harvard still is in the van.
Here they find the climate so propitious that
they can be happy in their very solitude.
The day when Harvard shall stamp a single
hard and fast type of character upon her
children, will be that of her downfall. Our
undisciplinables are our proudest product.
Let us agree together in hoping that the out-
put of them will never cease.

855

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

m. STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY*

Foreigners, commenting on our civiliza-
tion, have with great unanimity remarked the
privileged position that institutions of learn-
ing occupy in America as receivers of bene-
factions. Our typical men of wealth, if they
do not f oimd a college, will at least single out
some college or university on which to lavish
legacies or gifts. All the more so, perhaps,
if they are not college-bred men themselves.
Johns Hopkins University, the University of
Chicago, Clark University, are splendid ex-
amples of this rule. Steadily, year by year,
my own imiversity, Harvard, receives from
one to two and a half millions.

There is something almost pathetic in the
way in which our successful business men
seem to idealize the higher learning and to
believe in its efficacy for salvation. Never
having shared in its blessings, they do their
utmost to make the youth of coming genera-

* An Address at Stanford University on Founders*
Day, 1906. Printed in Science, for May 25, 1906.

856

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

tions more fortunate. Usually there is little
originality of thought in their generous foun-
dations. The donors follow the beaten track.
Their good will has to be vague, for they lack
the inside knowledge. What they usually
think of is a new college like all the older
colleges; or they give new buildings to a
university or help to make it larger, without
any definite idea as to the improvement of its
inner form. Improvements in the character
of our institutions always come from the
genius of the various presidents and facul-
ties. • The donors furnish means of propul-
sion, the experts within the pale lay out the
course and steer the vessel. You all think
of the names of Eliot, Oilman, Hall and Har-
per as I utter these words — I mention no
name nearer home.

This is foimders' day here at Stanford —
the day set apart each year to quicken and
reanimate in all of us the consciousness of the
deeper significance of this little university
to which we permanently or temporarily

belong. I am asked to use my voice to con-

357

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

tribute to this effect. How can I do so better
than by uttering quite simply and directly
the impressions that I personally receive?
I am one among our innumerable American
teachers, reared on the Atlantic coast but
admitted for this year to be one of the family
at Stanford. I see things not wholly from
without, as the casual visitor does, but partly
from within. I am probably a typical ob-
server. As my impressions are, so will be
the impressions of others. And those impres-
sions, taken together, will probably be the
verdict of history on the institution which
Leland and Jane Stanford foimded.

"Where there is no vision, the people per-
ish." Mr. and Mrs. Stanford evidently had
a vision of the most prophetic sort. They
saw the opportimity for an absolutely unique
creation, they seized upon it with the boldness
of great minds; and the passionate energy
with which Mrs. Stanford after her husband's
death, drove the original plans through in
the face of every dismaying obstacle, forms a

chapter in the biography of heroism. Heroic

358

n^^

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

also the loyalty with which in those dark
years the president and faculty made the
university's cause, their cause, and shared
the uncertainties and privations.

And what is the result to-day? To-day
the k^ ^gnote is triumphantly struck. The first ' ^f.,{
step is made beyond recall. The character
of the material foundation is assured for all
time as something unique and imparalleled.
It logically calls for an equally unique and
unparalleled spiritual superstructure.

Certainly the chief impression which the ,
existing university must make on every visi-
tor is of something unique and unparalleled.
Its attributes are almost too familiar to you
to bear recapitulation. The classic scenery _
of its site, reminding one of Greece, Greek too
in its atmosphere of opalescent fire, as if the
hills that close us in were bathed in ether,
milk and sunshine; the great city, near
enough for convenience, too far ever to be-
come invasive; the climate, so friendly to
work that every morning wakes one fresh

for new amounts of work; the noble archi-

359

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

lecture, so generously planned that there is
room and to spare for every requirement;
the democracy of the life, no one superflu-
ously rich, yet all sharing, so far as their
higher needs go, in the common endowment —
where could a genuis devoted to the search
for truth, and unworldly as most geniuses
are, find on the earth's whole round a place
more advantageous to come and work in?
Die Luft der Freiheit weht! All the tradi-
tions are individualistic. Red tape and organ-
\ ization are at their minimum. Interruptions
and perturbing distractions hardly exist.
Eastern institutions look all dark and huddled
and confused in comparison with this purity
and serenity. Shall it not be auspicious?
Surely the one destiny to which this happy
beginning seems to call Stanford is that it
should become something intense and original,
not necessarily in point of wealth or extent,
but in point of spiri tual quali ty. The founders
have, as I said, triumphantly struck the key-
note, and laid the basis: the quality of what

they have already given is unique in character.

360

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

It rests with the officials of the present and
future Stanford, it rests with the devotion |
and sympathetic insight of the growing body j
of graduates, to prolong the vision where the ;
founders' vision terminated, and to insure I
that all the succeeding steps, like the first
steps, shall single out this imiversity more
and more as the university of quality
peculiarly.

And what makes essential quality in a y
university? Years ago in New England it
was said that a log by the roadside with a
student sitting on one end of it, and Mark
Hopkins sitting on the other end, was a imi-
versity. ^t is the quality of its men that
makes the quality of a imiversity. i You may
have your buildings, you may create your
committees and boards and regulations, you
may pile up your machinery of discipline and
perfect your methods of instruction, you may
spend money till no one can approach you;
yet you will add nothing but one more trivial
specimen to the conunon herd of American

colleges, unless you send into all this organi-

861

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

zation some breath of life, by inoculating it
with a few men, at least, who are real geniuses.
And if yau once have the geniuses, you can
easily dispense with most of the organization.
Like a contagious disease, almost, spiritual
life passes from man to man by contact.
Education in the long run is an affair that
works itself out between the individual stu-
dent and his opportunities. Methods of which
we talk so much, play but a minor part.
Offer the opportimities, leave the student to
his natural reaction on them, and he will
work out his personal destiny, be it a high
one or a low one. Above all things, offer
the opportunity of higher personal contacts.
^ A university provides these anyhow within
the student body, for it attracts the more
aspiring of the youth of the country, and they
befriend and elevate one another. But we
are only beginning in this coimtry, with our
extraordinary American reliance on organi-
zation, to see that the alpha and omega in a
university is t he tone of it, a nd thatjhia,lpne

is _set by human personalities exclusively^

362

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

The world, in fact, is only beginning to see
that the wegithof a nation consists more than
in a nything else in the number of superior
men that it harborg^/ In the practical realm

it has always recognized this, and known that .
no price is too high to pay for a great states-
man or great captain of industry. But it is
equally so in the religious and moral sphere,
in the poetic and artistic sphere and in the
philosophic and scientific sphere. Geniuses
are ferments; and when they come together
as they have done in certain lands at certain
times, the whole population seems to share
in the higher energy which they awaken. The
eflFects are incalculable and often not easy
to trace in detail, but they are pervasive and •
momentous. Who can measure the effects
on the national German soul of the splen-
•did series of German poets and German
men of learning, most of them academic
personages?

From the bare economic point of view the
importance of geniuses is only beginning to

be appreciated. How can we measure the

863

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

cash-value to France of a Pasteur, to England
of a Kelvin, to Germany of an Ostwald, to us
here of a Burbank? One main care of every
coimtry in the future ought to be to find out
who its first-rate thinkers are and to help
them. Cost here becomes something entirely
irrelevant, the returns are sure to be so in-
conunensurable. This is what wise men the
world over are perceiving. And as the uni-
versities are already a sort of agency prov-
identially provided for the detection and
encouragement of mental superiority, it would
seem as if that one among them that fol-
lowed this line most successfully would quick-
est rise to a position of paramountcy and
distinction.

Why should not Stanford inunediately
adopt this as her vital policy? Her position
is one of imprecedented freedom. Not tram-
melled by the service of the state as other
universities on this coast are trammelled,
i ndependent of students' fees and consequently
of numbers, Utopian in the material respects
I have enumerated, she only needs a boldness

364

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

like that shown by her founders to become the
seat of a glowing intellectual life, sure to be
admired and envied the world over. Let her
claim her place; let her espouse her destiny.
Let her call great investigatqrs from whatever
lands they live in, from England, France,
Germany, Japan, as well as from America.
She can do this without presumption, for the
advantages of this place for steady mental
work are so unparalleled. Let these men,
following the happy traditions of the place,
make the university. The original founda-^
tion had something eccentric in it; let Stan-
ford not fear to be eccentric to the end, if
need be. Let her not imitate; let her lead,
not follow. Especially let her not be boimd
by vulgar traditions as to the cheapness or
deamess of professorial service. The day is
certainly about to dawn when some American
university will break all precedents in the
matter of instructors' sal^wies^ and will there-
by immediately take the lead, and reach the
winning post for quality. I like to think of

Stanford being that university. Geniuses are

365

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

sensitive plants, in some respects like prima
donnas. They have to be treated tenderly.
They don't need to live in superfluity; but
they need freedom from harassing care; they
need books and instruments; they are always
overworking, so they need generous vacations;
and above all things they need occasionally
to travel far and wide in the interests of their
souls* development. Where quality is the
thing sought after, the thing of supreme
quality is cheap, whatever be the price one
has to pay for it.

Considering all the conditions, the quality
of Stanford has from the first been astonish-
ingly good both in the faculty and in the
student body. Can we not, as we sit here
to-day, frame a vision of what it may be a
century hence, with the honors of the inter-
vening years all rolled up in its traditions?
Not vast, but intense; less a place for teaching
youths and maidens than for training schol-
ars; devoted to truth; radiating influence;
setting standards; shedding abroad the fruits

of learning; mediating between America and
^ 366^ ~ ^

STANFORD'S IDEAL DESTINY

^ia, and helping the more intellectual men
of both continents to understand each other
better.

What a history! and how can Stanford ever
fail to enter upon it?

867

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC*

^OT for the ignoble vulgar do I write this
article, but only for those dialectic-mystic
souls who have an irresistible taste, acquired
or native, for higher flights of metaphysics.
I have always held the opinion that one of
the first duties of a good reader is to summon
other readers to the enjoyment of any un-
known author of rare quality whom he may
discover in his explorations. Now for years
my own taste, literary as well as philosophic,
has been exquisitely titillated by a writer the
name of whom I think must be unknown to
the readers of this article; so I no longer
continue silent about the merits of Benjamin
Paul Blood.

Mr. Blood inhabits a city otherwise, I
imagine, quite unvisited by the Muses, the

* ^ Written during .the early summer of 1910 and
published in the Hibbert Journal for July of that
year.

S71

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

town called Amsterdam, situated on the New
York Central Railroad. What his regular
or bread-winning occupation may be I know
not, but it can't have made him super-
wealthy. He is an author only when the fit
strikes him, and for short spurts at a time;
§hy, moreover, to the point of publishing his
compositions only as private tracts, pr in
letters to such far-from-reverberant organs
of publicity as the Gazette or the Recorder of
his native Amsterdam, or the Utica Herald or
the Albany Times. Odd places for such
subtile eflForts to appear in, but creditable to
American editors in these degenerate days!
Once, indeed, the lamented W. T. Harris of
the old "Journal of Speculative Philosophy"
got wind of these epistles, and the result
was a revision of some of them for that
review (Philosophic Reveries ^ 1889). Also a
couple of poems were reprinted from their
leaflets by the editor of Scribner^s Maga-
zine ("The Lion of the Nile," 1888, and
"Nemesis,'* 189^). But apart from these

three dashes before the footlights, Mr. Blood

378

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

has kept behind the curtam all his
days.^

The author's maiden adventure was the
AncBsthetic Revelation^ a pamphlet printed
privately at Amsterdam in 1874. I forget
how it fell into my hands, but it fascinated
me so "weirdly" that I am conscious of its
having been one of the stepping-stones of
my thinking ever since. It gives the essence
of Blood's philosophy, and shows most of the
features of his talent — albeit one finds in it
little humor and no verse. It is full of verbal
felicity, felicity sometimes of precision, some-
times of metaphoric reach; it begins with
dialectic reasoning, of an extremely Fichtean
arid Hegelian type, but it ends in a tnunpet-
blast of oracular mysticism, straight from the
insight wrought by anaesthetics — of all things

^ "Yes! Paul is quite a correspondent! " said a good
citizen of Amsterdam, from whom I inquired the "way
to Mr. Blood's dwelling many years ago, after alight-
ing from the train. I had sought to identify him by
calling him an "author,'' but his neighbor thought of
him only as a writer of letters to the journals I have
named.

87S

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

in the world — and unlike anything one ever
heard before. The practically unanimous
tradition of "regular** mysticism has been
unquestionably monistic; and inasmuch as
it is the characteristic of mystics to speak,
not as the scribes, but as men who have "been
there'* and seen with their own eyes, I think
that this sovereign manner must have made
some other pluralistic-minded students hesi-
tate, as I confess that it has often given pause
to me. One cannot criticise the vision of a
mystic — one can but pass it by, or else ac-
cept it as having some amount of evidential
weight. I felt unable to do either with a
good conscience until I met with Mr. Blood.
His mysticism, which may, if one likes, be
understood as monistic in this earlier utter-
ance, develops in the later ones a sort of "left-
wing** voice of defiance, and breaks into what
to my ear has a radically pluralistic sound.
I confess that the existence of this novel
brand of mysticism has made my cowering
mood depart. I feel now as if my own plural-
ism were not without the kind of support

874

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

which mystical corroboration may confer.
Morrisop can no longer claim to be the only
beneficiary of whatever right mysticism may
possess to lend prestige.

This is my philosophic, as distinguished
from my literary, interest, in introducing Mr.
Blood to this more fashionable audience:
his philosophy, however mystical, is in the
last resort not dissimilar from my own. I
must treat him by "extracting" him, and
simplify — certainly all too violently — as
I extract. He is not consecutive as a writer,
aphoristic and oracular rather; and being
moreover sometimes dialectic, sometimes
poetic, and sometimes mystic in his manner;
sometimes monistic and sometimes pluralistic
in his matter, I have to run my own risk in
making him orate pro domo mea^ and I am
not quite unprepared to hear him say, in
case he ever reads these pages, that I have
entirely missed his point. No matter; I will
procieed.

S75

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

I will separate his diverse phases and take
him first as a pure dialectician. Dialectic
thought of the Hegelian type is a whirlpool
into which some persons are sucked out. of
the stream which the straightforward under-
standing follows. Once in the eddy, nothing
but rotary motion can go on. All who have
been in it know the feel of its swirl — they
know thenceforward that thinking unretum-
ing on itself is but one part of reason, and
that rectilinear mentality, in philosophy at
any rate, will never do. Though each one
may report in diflFerent words of his rotational
experience, the experience itself is almost
childishly simple, and whosoever has been
there instantly recognizes other authentic
reports. To have been in that eddy is a
freemasonry of which the conmion password
is a "fie** on all the operations of the simple
popular understanding.

In HegeFs mind the vortex was at its

liveliest, and any one who has dipped into

876

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

Hegel will recognize Mr. Blood to be of the
same tribe. "That Hegel was pervaded by
the great truth/' Blood writes, "cannot be
doubted. The eyes of philosophy, if not set
directly on him, are set towards the region
which he occupied. Though he may not be
the final philosopher, yet pull him out, and
all the rest will be drawn into his vacancy.'*
Drawn into the same whirlpool, Mr. Blood
means. Non-dialectic thought takes facts as
singly given, and accounts for one fact by
another. But when we think of "ott fact,''
we see that nothing of the nature of fact can
explain it, "for that were but one more added
to the list of things to be accounted for. . . .
The beginning of curiosity, in the philosophic
sense," Mr. Blood again writes, "is the stare
of being at itself, in the wonder why anything
is at all, and what this being signifies. Natu-
rally we first assiune the void, and then
wonder how, with no ground and no fertility,
anything should come into it." We treat it
as a positive nihility, "a barrier from which

all our batted balls of being rebound."

377

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Upon this idea Mr. Blood passes the usual
transcendentalist criticism. There is no such
separate opposite to being; yet we never
think of being as such — of pure being as
distinguished from specific forms of being —
save as what stands relieved against this
imaginary background. Being has no outline
but that which non-being makes, and the
two ideas form an inseparable pair. "Each
limits and defines the other. Either would be
the other in the same position, for here (where
there is as yet no question of content, but
only of being itself) the position is all and the
content is nothing. Hence arose that para-
dox: ^ Being is by nothing more real than
not-being.* **

"Popularly,*' Mr. Blood goes on, "we

think of all that is as having got the better of

non-being. If all were not — that^ we think,

were easy: there were no wonder then, no

tax on ingenuity, nothing to be accounted for.

This conclusion is from the thinking which

assiunes all reality as immediately given,

assiunes knowledge as a simple physical

S78

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

light, rather than as a distinction involving
light and darkness equally. We assume that
if the light were to go out, the show would
be ended (and so it would); but we forget
that if the darkness were to go out, that would
be equally calamitous. It were bad enough
if the master had lost his crayon, but the loss
of the blackboard would be just as fatal to
the demonstration. Without darkness light
would be useless — universal light as blind
as universal darkness. Universal thing and
universal no-thing were indistinguishable.
Why, then, assume the positive, the immed-
iately aflSrmative, as alone the ingenious?
Is not the mould as shapely as the model?
The original ingenuity does not show in
bringing light out of darkness, nor in bringing
things out of nothing, but in evolving, through
the just opposition of light and darkness, this
wondrous picture, in which the black and
white lines have equal significance — in evolv-
ing from life and death at once, the conscious
spirit. • • .

"It is our habit to think of life as dear,
S79

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

and of death as cheap (though Tithonus

found them otherwise), or, continuing the

simile of the picture, that paper is cheap

while drawing is expensive; but the engraver

had a diflFerent estimation in one sense, for

all his labor was spent on the white ground,

while he left untouched those parts of the

block which make the lines in the picture.

If being and non-being are both necessary to

the presence of either, neither shall claim

priority or preference. Indeed, we may fancy

an intelligence which, instead of regarding

things as simply owning entity, should regard

chiefly their background as affected by the

holes which things are making in it. Even

so, the paper-maker might see your picture

as intrusive! '*

Thus "does the negation of being appear

as indispensable in the making of it.'' But

to anyone who should appeal to particular

forms of being to refute this paradox, Mr.

Blood admits that "to say that a picture, or

any other sensuous thing, is the same as the

want of it, were to utter nonsense indeed:

380

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

there is a difference equivalent to the whole
stuff and merit of the picture; but in so far
as the picture can be there for thought, as
something either asserted or negated, its
presence or its absence are the same and
indifferent. By its absence we do not mean
the absence of anything else, nor absence in
general; and how, forsooth, does its absence
differ from these other absences, save by con-
taining a complete description of the picture?
The hole is as round as the plug; and from
our thought the * picture' cannot get away.
The negation is specific and descriptive, and
what it destroys it preserves for our concep-
tion."

The result is that, whether it be taken
generally or taken specifically, all that which
either is or is not is or is not by distinction or
opposition. **And observe the life, the pro-
cess, through which this slippery doubleness
endures. Let us suppose the present tense,
that gods and men and angels and devils
march all abreast in this present instant, and

the only real time and date in the universe is

S81

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

now. And what is this instant now? What-
ever else, it is process — becoming and depart-
ing; with what between? Simply division,
difference; the present has no breadth for
if it had, that which we seek would be the
middle of that breadth. There is no precip-
itate, as on a stationary platform, of the pro-
cess of becomings no residuum of the process
of departing, but between the two is a curtain,
the apparition of difference, which is all the
world."

I am using my scissors somewhat at random
on my author's paragraphs, since one place
is as good as another for entering a ring by,
and the expert reader will discern at once the
authentic dialectic circling. Other paragraphs
show Mr. Blood as more Hegelian still, and
thoroughly idealistic: —

^^ Assume that knowing is distinguishing^
and that distinction is of difference; if one
knows a difference, one knows it as of entities
which afford it, and which also he knows;
and he must know the entities and the differ-
ence apart, — one from the other. Ejiowing

382

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

all this, he should be able to answer the twin
question, * What is the difference between same-
ness and difference?^ It is a Hwin' question,
because the two terms are equal in the prop-
osition, and each is full of the other. . . .

"Sameness has *all the difference in the
world' — from difference; and difference is
an entity as difference — it being identically
that. They are alike and different at once,
since either is the other when the observer
would contrast it with the other; so that
the sameness and the difference are * subjec-
tive,' are the property of the observer: his
is the ^limit' in their unlimited field. . . .

"We are thus apprized that distinction
involves and carries its own identity; and
that ultimate distinction — distinction in the
last analysis — is self -distinction , * self-knowl-
edge,' as we realize it consciously every day.
Knowledge is self -referred: to know is to
know that you know, and to be known as well.

" *Ah! but both in the same time?* inquires
the logician. A subject-object knowing it-
self as a seamless unit, while yet its two items

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

show a real distinction: this passes all under-
standing."

But the whole of ides^lism goes to the proof
that the two sides cannot succeed one another
in a time-process. "To say you know, and
you know that you know, is to add nothing
in the last clause; it is as idle as to say that
you lie, and you know that you lie," for if
you know it not you lie not.

Philosophy seeks to grasp totality, "but
the power of grasping or consenting to total-
ity involves the power of thought to make
itself its own object. Totality itself may
indeed be taken by the nawe intellect as an
immediate topic, in the sense of being just
an object, but it cannot be just that; for the
knower, as other or opposite, would still be
within that totality. The * universe' by defi-
nition must contain all opposition. If dis-
tinction should vanish, what would remain?
To what other could it change as a whole?
How can the loss of distinction make a
difference? Any loss, at its utmost, offers

a new status with the old, but obviously it

384

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

is too late now to efface distinction by a
change. There is no possible conjecture, but
such as carries with it the subjective that
holds it; and when the conjecture is of dis-
tinction in general, the subjective fills the
void with distinction of itself. The ultimate,
ineffaceable distinction is self-distinction,
self -consciousness. . . . *Thou art the iman-
swered question, couldst see thy proper eye.'
. . . The thought that must be is the very
thought of our experience; the ultimate
opposition, the to be and not to be, is per-
sonality, spirit — somewhat that is in know-
ing that it is, and is nothing else but this
knowing in its vast relations. ^

^ "How shall a man know he is alive — since in
thought the knowing constitutes the being alive, with-
out knowing that thought (life) from its opposite, and
so knowing both, and so far as being is knowing, being
both? Each defines and relieves the other, each is
impossible in thought without the other; therefore
each has no distinction save as presently contrasting
with the other, and each by itself is the same, and noth-
ing. Clearly, then, consciousness is neither of one nor
of the other nor of both, but a knowing subject per-
ceiving them and itself together and as one. ... So,
in coming out of the anaesthetic exhilaration ... we

385

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

"Here lies the bed-rock; here the bram-
sweat of twenty-five centuries crystallizes to
a jewel five words long: *The Universe
has No Opposite/ For there the wonder of
that which is, rests safe in the perception
that all things are only through the opposi-
tion which is their only fear."

"The inevitable generally," in short, is
exactly and identically that which in point
of fact is actually here.

This is the familiar nineteenth-century
development of Kant's idealistic vision. To
me it sounds monistic enough to charm the
monist in me unreservedly. I listen to the

want to tell something; but the effort instantly proves
that something will stay back and do the telling — one
must utter one's own throat, one must eat one's own
teeth, to express the being that possesses one. The re-
sult is ludicrous and astounding at once — astounding
in the clear perception that this is the ultimate mystery
of life, and is given you as the old Adamic secret, which
you then feel that all intelligence must sometime know
or have known; yet ludicrous in its familiar simplicity,
as somewhat that any man should always perceive at
his best, if his head were only level, but which in our
ordinary thinking has grown into a thousand creeds and
theories dignified as religion and philosophy."

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

felicitously-worded concept-music circling

round itself, as on some drowsy summer

noon one listens under the pines to the

miumuring of leaves and insects, and with

as little thought of criticism.

But Mr. Blood strikes a still more vibrant

note: "No more can be than rationally is;

and this was always true. There is no reason

for what is not; but for what there is reason,

that is and ever was. Especially is there no

becoming of reason, and hence no reason for

becoming, to a sufficient intelligence. In the

sufficient intelligence all things always are,

and are rational. To say there is something

yet to be which never was, not even in the

sufficient intelligence wherein the world is

rational and not a blind and orphan waif,

is to ignore all reason. Aught that might be

assumed as contingently coming to be could

only have * freedom' for its origin; and

* freedom' has not fertility or invention, and

is not a reason for any special thing, but the

very vacuity of a ground for anything in

preference to its room. Neither is there in
387

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

bare time any principle or originality whereby
anything should come or go. .^ . .

"Such idealism enures greatly to the dignity
and repose of man. No blind fate, prior to
what Is, shall necessitate that all first be and
afterward be known, but knowledge is first,
with fate in her own hands. When we are
depressed by the weight and immensity of the
immediate, we find in idealism a wondrous
consolation. The alien positive, so vast and
overwhelming by itself, reduces its pretensions
when the whole negative confronts it on our
side.^ It matters little for its greatness when
an equal greatness is opposed. When one
remembers that the balance and motion of
the planets are so delicate that the momen-
tary scowl of an eclipse may fill the heavens
with tempest, and even affect the very bowels

^ Elsewhere Mr. Blood writes of the "force of the
negative" thus: — "As when a faded lock of woman's
hair shall cause a man to cut his throat in a bedroom
at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany resounds
with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty
office at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across
the page the word 'unconstitutional' — the glory of
the Capitol has faded."

S88

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

of the earth — when we see a balloon, that
carries perhaps a thousand pounds, leap up
a hundred feet at the discharge of a sheet of
note paper — or feel it stand deathly still in
a hurricane, because it goes with the hurri-
cane, sides with it, and ignores the rushing
world below — we should realize that one
tittle of pure originality would outweigh this
crass objective, and turn these vast masses
into mere breath and tissue-paper show/' ^

^ Elsewhere Blood writes: — "But what then, in
the name of common sense, is the external world? If a
dead man could answer he would say Nothing, or as
Macbeth said of the air-drawn dagger, 'there is no such
thing.' But a live man's answer might be in this way:
What is the multiplication table when it is not written
down? It is a necessity of thought; it was not created,
it cannot but be; every intelligence which goes to it,
and thinks, must think in that form or think falsely.
So the universe is the statk; necessity of reason; it is
not an object for any intelligence to find, but it is half
object and half subject; it never cost anything as a
whole; it never was made, but always is made, in the
Logos, or expression of reason — the Word; and
slowly but surely it will be understood and uttered in
every intellig^ice, until he is one with (xod or reason
itself. As a man, for all he knows, or has known,
stands at any fpvea instant the realiasation of only one
thought, while all the rest ol him is invisib^ hnked to

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

But whose is the originality? There is
nothing in what I am treating as this phase
of our author's thought to separate it from
the old-fashioned rationalism. There must
be a reason for every fact; and so much
reason, so fact. The reason is always the
whole foil and backgroimd and negation of
the fact, the whole remainder of reality*
"A man may feel good only by feeling bet-
ter. * . . Pleasure is ever in the company
and contrast of pain; for instance, in thirst-
ing and drinking, the pleasure of the one is
the exact measure of the pain of the other,
and they cease precisely together — otherwise
the patient would drink more. The black and
yellow gonfalon of Lucifer is indispensable
in any spiritual picture." Thus do truth's
two components seem to balance, vibrating
across the centre of indifference; "being and

that in the necessary form and concatenation of reason,
so the man as a whole of exploited thoughts is a moment
in the front of the concatenated reason of the universal
whole; and this whole is personal only as it is personally
achieved. This is the Kingdom that is * within you,*
and the God which ^no man hath seen at any time.'" j ,
S90

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

non-being have equal value and cost," and
"mainly are convertible in their terms." ^

This soimds radically monistic; and monistic
also is the first accoimt of the Ether-revela-
tion, in which we read that "thenceforth
each is all, in God. . . . The One remains,

^ There are passages in Blood that sound like a
well-known essay by Emerson. For instance: —
'* Experience bums into us the fact and the necessity
of universal compensation. The philosopher takes it
from Heraclitusy in the insight that everything exists
through its opposite; and the bummer comforts him-
self for his morning headache as only the rough side of
a square deal. We acc^t readily the doctrine, that
pain and pleasure, evil and good, death and life, chance
and reason, are necessary equations — that there
must be just as much of each as of its other.

"It grieves us little that this great compensation
cannot at every instant balance its beam on every
individual centre, and dispense with an under dog in
every fight; we know that the parts must subserve
the whole; we have faith that our time will come; and
if it comes not at all in this world, our lack is a bid for
immortality, and the most promising argument for a
world hereafter. * Though He slay me, yet will I trust
in Him.'

"This is the faith that baffles all calamity, and en-
sures genius and patience in the world. Let not the
creditor hasten the settlement: let not the injured man
hurry toward revenge; there is nothing that draws
bigger interest than a wrong, and to *get the best of
it' is ever in some sense to get the worst."

S91

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

the many change and pass; and every one
of us is the One that remains,"

It seems to me that any transcendental
idealist who reads this article ought to dis-
cern in the fragmentary utterances which I
have quoted thus far, the note of what he
considers the truer dialectic profundity. He
ought to extend the glad hand of fellowship
to Mr. Blood; and if he finds him after-
wards palavering with the enemy, he ought
to coimt him, not as a simple ignoramus or
Philistine, but as a renegade and relapse. He
cannot possibly be treated as one who sins
because he never has known better, or as
one who walks in darkness because he is
congenitally blind.

Well, Mr. Blood, explain it as one may,
does turn towards the darkness as if he had
never seen the light. Just listen for a moment
to such irrationalist deliverances on his part
as these: —

"Reason is neither the first nor the last
892

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

word in this world. Reason is an equation;
it gives but a pound for a poimd. Nature is
excess; she is evermore, without cost or ex-
planation.

^ Is heaven so poor that jiistice

Metes the bounty of the skies?
So poor that every blessing
Fills the debit of a cost?
That all process is returning?
And all gain is of the lost? '

Go back into reason, and you come at last
to fact, nothing more — a given-ness, a some-
thing to wonder at and yet admit, like your
own will. And all these tricks for logiciz-
ing originality, self-relation, absolute process,
subjective contradiction, will wither in the
breath of the mystical fact; they will swirl
down the corridors before the besom of the
everlasting Yea."

Or again: "The monistic notion of a one-
ness, a centred wholeness, ultimate purpose,
or climacteric result of the world, has wholly
given way. Thought evolves no longer a
centred whole, a One, but rather a mmiberless

many, adjust it how we will."

893

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

Or still again: "The pluralists have talked
philosophy to a standstill — Nature is con-
tingent, excessive and mystical essentially/'

Have we here contradiction simply, a man
converted from one faith to its opposite?
Or is it only dialectic circling, like the oppo-
site points on the rim of a revolving disc,
one moving up, one down, but replacing one
another endlessly, while the whole disc never
moves? If it be this latter — Mr. Blood him-
self uses the image — the dialectic is too
pure for me to catch: a deeper man must
mediate the monistic with the pluralistic
Blood. Let my incapacity be castigated, if
my "Subject"' ever reads this article, but
let me treat him from now onwards as the
simply pluralistic mystic whicli my reading
of the rest of him suggests. I confess to some ^
dread of my own fate at his hands. In making
so far an ordinary transcendental idealist of
him, I have taken liberties, running separate
sentences together, inverting their order, and
even altering single words, for all which I

beg pardon; but in treating my author from

394

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

now onwards as a pluralist, interpretation
is easier, and my hands can be less stained
(if they are stained) with exegetic blood.

I have spoken of his verbal felicity, and
alluded to his poetry. Before passing to his
mystic gospel, I will refresh the reader (doubt-
less now fatigued with so much dialectic) by a
sample of his verse. "The Lion of the Nile'*
is an allegory of the "champion spirit of the
world" in its various incarnations.

Thus it begins: —

"Whelped on the desert sands, and desert bred
From dugs whose sustenance was blood alone —
A life translated out of other lives,
I grew the king of beasts; the hurricane
Leaned like a feather on my royal fell;
I took the Hyrcan tiger by the scruflF
And tore him piecemeal; my hot bowels laughed
And my fangs yearned for prey. Earth was my

lair:
I slept on the red desert without fear:
I roamed the jimgle depths with less design
Than e'en to lord their solitude; on crags
That cringe from lightning — black and blasted

fronts
That crouch beneath the wind-bleared stars, I told
S95

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

My hearths fruition to the universe.
And all night long, roaring my fierce dirfy,
I thrilled the wilderness with aspen terrors,
And challenged death and life. . . ."

Again:
^' Naked I stood upon the raked arena
Beneath the pennants of Vespasian,
While seried thousands gazed — strangers from

Caucasus,
Men of the Grecian Isles, and Barbary princes.
To see me grapple with the counterpart
Of that I had been — the raptorial jaws.
The arms that wont to crush with strength alone.
The eyes that glared vindictive. — Fallen there, '
Vast wings upheaved me; from the Alpine peaks
Whose avalanches swirl the valley mists
And whelm the helpless cottage, to the crown
Of Chimhorazo, on whose changeless jewels
The torrid rays recoil, with ne'er a cloud
To swathe their blistered steps, I rested not.
But preyed on all that ventured from the earth.
An outlaw of the heavens. — But evermore
Must death release me to the jungle shades;
And there like Samson's grew my locks again
In the old walks and ways, till scapeless fate
Won me as ever to the haunts of men.
Luring my lives with battle and with love." . . .

I quote less than a quarter of the poem, of

which the rest is just as good, and I ask: Who

396

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

of us all handles his English vocabulary better
than Mr. Blood? ^

His proclamations of the mystic insight
have a similar verbal power: —

"There is an invariable and reliable con-
dition (or uncondition) ensuing about the
instant of recall from anaesthetic stupor to
^coming to/ in which the genius of being is
revealed. ... No words may express the im-
posing certainty of the patient that he is re-
alizing the primordial Adamic surprise of Life.

"Repetition of the experience finds it ever
the same, and as if it could not possibly be
otherwise. The subject resumes his normal
consciousness only to partially and fitfully

^ Or what thinks the reader of the verbiage of these
verses? — addressed in a mood of human defiance to the
cosmic Gods —

** Whose lightnings tawny leap from furtive lain.
To helpless murder, while the ships go down
Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers
Go up in noisome bubbles — such to them; —
Or when they tramp about the c^itral fires.
Bending the strata with aeonian tread
Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost, —
Deem th^ of wife or child, or home or friend*
Doing these things as the long years lead on
Only to other years that mean no more.
That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof — ^
Destroying ever, though to rear again."

S97

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

remember its occurrence, and to try to for-
mulate its baffling import, — with but this
consolatory afterthought: that he has known
the oldest truth, and that he has done with
human theories as to the origin, meaning, or
destiny of the race. He is beyond instruc-
tion in 'spiritual things/ . . .

"It is the instant contrast of this Wasteless
water of souls' with formal thought as we
*come to,' that leaves in the patient an aston-
ishment that the awful mystery of Life is at
last but a homely and a common thing, and
that aside from mere formality the majestic
and the absurd are of equal dignity. The
astonishment is aggravated as at a thing of
course, missed by sanity in overstepping, as
in too foreign a search, or with too eager an
attention: as in finding one's spectacles on
one's nose, or in making in the dark a step
higher than the stair. My first experiences of
this revelation had many varieties of emotion;
but as a man grows calm and determined by
experience in general, so am I now not only
firm and familiar in this once weird condition.

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

but triumphant, divine. To minds of sanguine
imagination there will be a sadness in the tenor
of the mystery, as if the key-note of the uni-
verse were low ; for no poetry, no emotion known
to the normal sanity of man, can furnish a hint
of its primeval prestige, and its ail-but appal-
ling solenmity; but for such as have felt sadly
the instability of temporal things there is a
comfort of serenity and ancient peace; while
for the resolved and imperious spirit there are
majesty and supremacy unspeakable. Nor can
it be long until all who enter the anaesthetic
condition (and there are hundreds every secu-
lar day) will be taught to expect this revelation,
and will date from its experience their initia-
tion into the Secret of Life. . . .

"This has been my moral sustenance since
I have known of it. In my first printed men-
tion of it I declared: *The world is no more
the alien terror that was taught me. Spum-
ing the cloud-grimed and still sultry battle-
ments whence so lately Jehovan thimders
boomed, my gray gull lifts her wing against

the night fall, and takes the dim leagues with

399

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

a fearless eye/ And now, after twenty-
seven years of this experience, the wing is
grayer, but the eye is fearless still, while I
renew and doubly emphasize that declaration.
I know, as having known, the meaning of
Existence ; the sane centre of the universe — at
once the wonder and the assurance of the soul."

After this rather literary interlude I re-
turh to Blood's philosophy again. I spoke
a while ago of its being an "irrationalistic''
philosophy in its latest phase. Behind every
"fact" rationalism postulates its "reason."
Blood parodizes this demand in true nomi-
nalistic fashion. "The goods are not enough,
but they must have the invoice with them.
There must be a name, something to read. I
think of Dickens's horse that always fell
down when they took him out of the shafts;
or of the fellow who felt weak when naked,
but strong in his overcoat." No bad mock-
ery, this, surely, of rationalism's habit of
explaining things by putting verbal doubles

of them beneath them as their groimd!

400

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

"All that philosophy has sought as cause,
or reason/' he says, "pluralism subsumes in
the status and the given fact, where it stands
as plausible as it may ever hope to stand.
There may be disease in the presence of a
question as well as in the lack of an answer.
We do not wonder so strangely at an ingenious
and well-set-up eflFect, for we feel such in
ourselves; but a cause, reaching out beyond
the verge [of fact] and dangling its legs in
nonentity, with the hope of a rational foot-
hold, should realize a strenuous life. Plur-
alism believes in truth and reason, birt only
as mystically realized, as lived in experience.
Up from the breast of a man, up to his tongue
and brain, comes a free and strong deter-
mination, and he cries, originally, and in
spite of his whole nature and environment,
*I will.' This is the Jovian fiat^ the pure
cause. This is reason; this or nothing shall
explain the world for him. For how shall he
entertain a reason bigger than himself? . . .
Let a man stand fast, then, as an axis of the

earth; the obsequious meridians will bow to

401

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

him, and gracious latitudes will measure
from his feet/'

This seems to be Blood's mystical answer
to his own monistic statement which I quoted
above, that "freedom" has no fertility, and
is no reason for any special thing.^ "Philo-

^ I subjoin a poetic apostrophe of Mr. Blood's to
freedom:

"Let it ne'er be known.
If in some book of the Inevitable,
Dog-eared and stale, the future stands engrossed
E'en as the past. There shall be news in heaven.
And question in the courts thereof; and chance
Shall have its fling, e'en at the [ermined] bench.

^ Ah, long ago, above the Indian ocean.
Where wan stars brood over the dreaming East*
I saw, white, liquid, palpitant, the Cross;
And faint and far came bells of Calvaiy
As planets passed, singing that they were saved.
Saved from themselves: but ever low Orion —
For hunter too was I, bom of the wild.
And the game flavor of the infinite
Tainted me to the bone — he waved me on.
On to the tangent field beyond all orbs.
Where form nor order nor continuance
Hath thought nor name; there unity exhales
In want of confine, and the protoplasm
May beat and beat, in aimless vehemence.
Through vagrant spaces, homeless and unknown.

There ends One's empire! — but so ends not all;
One knows not all; my griefs at least are mine —
By me their measure, and to me their lesson;
E'en I am one — (poor deuce to call the Ace!)
And to the open bears my gonfalon.
Mine eegis. Freedom! — Let me ne'er look back
Accusing, for the withered leaves and lives

402

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

sophy/' Mr. Blood writes to me in a letter,
"is past. It was the long endeavor to logi-
cize what we can only realize practically or
in immediate experience. I am more and
more impressed that Heraclitns insists on the
equation of reason and unreason, or chance, t
as well as of being and not-being, etc. This
throws the secret beyond logic, and makes
mysticism outclass philosophy. The insight
that mystery, — the Mystery, as such is final,
is the hymnic word. If you use reason prag-
matically, and deny it absolutely, you can't
be beaten; be assured of that. But the
Fact remains, and of course the Mystery.'' ^

The sated past hath strewn, the shears of fate»
But forth to braver days.

O, Liberty,
Burthen of every sigh! — thou gold of gold.
Beauty of the beautiful, strength of the strong!
My soul for ever turns agaze for thee.
There is no purpose of eternity
For faith or patience; but thy buoyant torch
Still lighted from the Islands of the Blest,
overbears all present for potential heavens
Which are not — ah, so more than all that are!
Whose chance postpones the ennui of the skies!
Be thou my genius — be my hope in thee!
For this were heaven: to b^ and to be free."

* In another letter Mr. Blood writes: — "I think we
are through with *the Wh<Je,' and with ^cauaa suh'
and with .the 'negative unity' which assumes to iden-

40S

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

The "Fact/' as I understand the writer
here to mean it, remains in its native dissem-
inated shape. From every realized amount
of fact some other fact is absent, as being
iminvolved. "There is nowhere more of it
consecutively, perhaps, than appears upon
this present page." There is, indeed, to put
it otherwise, no more one all-enveloping fact
than there is one all-enveloping spire in an
endlessly growing spiral, and no more one
all-generating fact than there is one central
point in which an endlessly converging spiral
ends. HegeFs "bad infinite" belongs to the
eddy as well as to the line. "Progress?"
writes our author. "And to what? Time
turns a weary and a wistful face; has he not
traversed an eternity? and shall another give

tify each thing as being what it lacks of everything else.
You can, of course, build out a chip by modelling the
sphere it was chipped from; — but if it was n't a sphere?
What a weariness it is to look back over the twenty
odd volumes of the * Journal of Speculative Philos-
ophy * and see Harris's mind wholly filled by that one
conception of self-determination — everything to be
thought as *part of a system' — a * whole' and 'causa
8uV — I should like to see such an idea get into the
head of Edison or George Westinghouse."

«./]

A pluralistic: mystic

the secret up? We have dreamed of a clunax
and a consummation, a final triumph where a
world shall burn en barbecue; but there is
not, cannot be, a purpose of eternity; it
shall pay mainly as it goes, or not at all. The
show is on; and what a show, if we will but
give our attention! Barbecues, bonfires, and
banners? Not twenty worlds a minute would
keep up our bonfire of the sim; and what
banners of our fancy could eclipse the meteor
pennants of the pole, or the opaline splen-
dors of the everlasting ice? . . . Doubtless
we are ostensibly progressing, but there have
been prosperity and highjinks before. Nin-
eveh and Tyre, Rome, Spain, and Venice also
had their day. We are going, but it is a ques-
tion of our standing the pace. It would seem
that the news must become less interesting
or tremendously more so — ^a breath can
make us, as a breath has made.' "

Elsewhere we read: "Variety, not imifor-
mity, is more likely to be the key to progress.
The genius of being is whimisical rather than

consistent. Oiu: strata show broken bones

405

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

of histories all forgotten. How can it be
otherwise? There can be no purpose of
eternity. It is process all. The most sublime
result, if it appeared as the ultimatum, would
go stale in an hour; it could not be endured."

Of course from an intellectual point of
view this way of thinking must be classed as
scepticism. "Contingency forbids any inevi-
table history, and conclusions are absurd.
Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from
being blown to pieces." Obviously the mys-
tical "security," the "apodal suflSciency"
yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are
very diflFerent moods of mind from aught that
rationalism can claim to father — more active,
prouder, more heroic. From his ether-intox-
ication Blood may feel towards ordinary
rationalists "as Clive felt towards those
millions of Orientals in whom honor had no
part." On page 6, above, I quoted from his
"Nemesis" — "Is heaven so poor that jus-
tice," etc. The writer goes on, addressing
the goddess of "compensation" or rational

balance: —

406

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

"How shalt thou poise the courage

That covets all things hard?
How pay the love unmeasured

That could not brook reward?
How prompt self -loyal honor

Supreme above desire,
That bids the strong die for the weak,

The martyrs sing in fire?
Why do I droop in bower

And sigh in sacred hall?
Why stifle under shelter?

Yet where, through forest tall.
The breath of hungry winter

In stinging spray resolves,
I sing to the north wind's fury

And shout with the coarse-haired wolves?

What of thy priests' confuting.

Of fate and form and law.
Of being and essence and counterpoise^

Of poles that drive and draw?
Ever some compensation.

Some pandering purchase still!
But the vehm of achieving reason

Is the all-patrician Will!"

Mr. Blood must manage to re-write the

last two lines; but the contrast of the two

securities, his and the rationalist's, is plain

407

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

enough. The rationalist sees safe conditions.
But Mr. Blood's revelation, whatever the
conditions be, helps him to stand ready for a
life among them. In this, his attitude seems
to resemble that of Nietzsche's amor fatil
"Simply," he writes to me, ''we do not know.
But when we say we do not know, we are not
to say it weakly and meekly, but with con-
fidence and content. . . . Knowledge is and
must ever be secondary y a witness rather than
a principal, or a * principle'! — in the case.
Therefore mysticism for me!"

"Reason," he prints elsewhere, "is but an
item in the duplex potency of the mystery,
and behind the proudest consciousness that
ever reigned. Reason and Wonder blushed
face to face. The legend sinks to burlesque
if in that great argument which antedates
man and his mutterings, Lucifer had not a
fighting chance. ...

"It is given to the writer and to others for

whom he is permitted to speak — and we are

grateful that it is the custom of gentlemen

to believe one another — that the highest

408

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

thought is not a milk-and-water equation of
so much reason and so much result — 'no
school sum to be cast up/ We have realized
the highest divine thought of itself, and there
is in it as much of wonder as of certainty;
inevitable, and solitary and safe in one sense,
but queer and cactus-like no less in another
sense, it appeals imutterably to experience
alone.

"There are sadness and disenchantment for
the novice in these inferences, as if the key-
note of the universe were low, but experience
will approve them. Certainty is the root of
despair. The inevitable stales, while doubt
and hope are sisters. Not unfortunately the
universe is wild — game flavored as a hawk's
wing. Nature is miracle all. She knows no
laws; the same returns not, save to bring the
diflFerent. The slow round of the engraver^s
lathe gains but the breadth of a hair, but the
diflFerence is distributed back over the whole
curve, never an instant true - — ever not quite.'*

"Ever not quite!'' — this seems to wring

the very last panting word out of rationalistic

409

MEMORIES AND STUDIES

philosophy's mouth. It is fit to be pluralism's
heraldic device. There is no complete gener-
alization, no total point of view, no all-per-
vasive unity, but everywhere some residual
resistance to verbalization, formulation, and
discursification, some genius of reality that
escapes from the pressure of the logical finger,
that says "hands oflF," and claims its privacy,
and means to be left to its own life. In every
moment of immediate experience is some-
what absolutely original and novel. "We
are the first that ever burst into this silent
sea." [Philosophy must pass from words, that
reproduce but ancient elements, to life it-
self, that gives the integrally new. The
"inexplicable," the "mystery," as what the
intellect, with its claim to reason out reality,
thinks that it is in duty bound to resolve,
and the resolution of which Blood's revela-
tion would eliminate from the sphere of our
duties, remains; but it remains as something
to be met and dealt with by faculties more
akin to our activities and heroisms and wiU-

ingnesses, than to our logical powers. This

410

A PLURALISTIC MYSTIC

is the anaesthetic insight, according to our
author. Let my last word, then, speaking in
the name of intellectual philosophy, be his
word: — "There is no conclusion. What
has concluded, that we might conclude in
regard to it? There are no fortunes to be
told, and there is no advice to be given. —
Farewell! "

411

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

"yi'd'^ ■* ■* "'*

k:.

V20 35

"».■

X,.-..

-■I !

t^ irirM -t

STANFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

CECIL H\ GREEN LIBRARY

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305-6004

(415) 723-1493

All books may be recalled offer 7 days

DATE DUE

OUN3lk-2ln)6

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Memories and studies"

See other formats